


The Clouds That Carved the Mountains

by Tirashan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: ...that eventually becomes dark fantasy, Adventure, F/M, Fantasy, Romance, except maybe the people fighting it, nothing about the blight is fun lbr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:14:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24623014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tirashan/pseuds/Tirashan
Summary: 'Step by step, walk the thousand-mile road'. A de-gamified retelling of Dragon Age: Origins, following Eris Mahariel from the depths of grief to the leadership of the Grey Wardens. Multiple POVs & liberally canon divergent when needed. Eventual Zevmance. Get in losers, we're killing darkspawn.
Relationships: Female Mahariel/Tamlen (Dragon Age), Zevran Arainai/Female Mahariel
Comments: 29
Kudos: 79





	1. Windows Dead and Wicked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rather than slamming those italics for elven phrases and providing translations, it's safe to assume for this fic that if the Dalish are speaking amongst themselves that it's their own modern dialect of elven they're using. I'll use untranslated elven only when there isn't a smooth translation into English, but it won't come up too often outside this chapter.

"Don't move."

Eris had been drifting off in Tamlen's arms, but instinct forced her still when he breathed his warning in her ear. Her mind immediately flashed to the image of a bear lurking just behind her, or humans prowling the grassy bank, but when her gaze darted up to Tamlen's face it was awe that she saw in his eyes, not fear.

"It's an elk," Tamlen whispered. "Right across the pond. It's not facing us; turn over slowly."

Tamlen carefully drew his arm away from Eris's side, allowing her to shift, inch by inch, over on the blanket they'd spread out on the grass. Across the pond from them was a massive lone elk grazing at a berry bush. It was right in the middle of shedding season, and the bull had thick, bloody strings of velvet hanging from its antlers.

"I can get it," Eris whispered, not looking back at Tamlen. Her weapons lay just a foot away from her. She carefully reached out her hand for her bow, painstakingly slowly so as not to rustle the grass beneath it.

"No way," Tamlen breathed, excitement in his voice. The bull seemed preoccupied with the berry bush, and Eris took as much time as she could bear sliding out an arrow from her quiver. She sat up on her knees, and though she was positioned rather uncomfortably she didn't dare move and snap a stray twig lying under the blanket.

Eris took a steady breath in. "Andruil, guide my arrow," she prayed under her breath, and began lining up her shot...

And immediately swore as the breeze turned downwind, and the elk looked up for the source of their scent.

Eris loosed her arrow, though she knew it was too late. The elk bounded away the moment he spotted them, and her arrow landed harmlessly in the berry bush.

Tamlen groaned and laid back down on the blanket, hands rubbing his face. "You were so close!" He said with a laugh, not caring to keep his voice down now. "Imagine bringing that beast back to camp!"

"I knew it was too good to be true," Eris said as she collapsed down next to him, and dropped her bow at her side.

"Should've prayed about the wind, instead," Tamlen teased, but he laid an arm over her bare torso. "I think you should hunt half-naked more often, _lethallan_."

This got a laugh out of Eris, and she turned to kiss him. His body was pleasantly warm in the bracing spring breeze, and Tamlen wasted no time in drawing himself closer.

"Blessed Creators, Tamlen, haven't you had enough for one morning?" Eris laughed, pulling herself away.

A familiar boyish grin spread across Tamlen's face. "Of you? Never."

Eris gave an unimpressed huff in response. She looked back to where the elk had been grazing. Even from across the pond, she could see the broken grass and dirt the beast had kicked up when he fled.

"You're not going to—"

"Yes, I am."

"We were supposed to be relaxing today," Tamlen groaned, indicating the blanket they'd laid down and the debris from their small picnic. They had felt a little guilty about sneaking the extra pack away from camp when they were supposed to be out hunting, but they both felt they'd earned a day to themselves.

Eris was already gathering her hunting leathers and pulling them back on. "You don't have to come with me," she said matter-of-factly as she tugged on her boots.

"Well, what else am I going to do?" Tamlen scoffed. "Knit with Hahren Paivel?"

"Then get dressed, and help me pack all this up." Eris bundled up Tamlen's undershirt and tossed it at his chest, "We've got an elk to track."

* * *

As much experience as Eris had tracking her prey, this elk seemed to have twice as much in evasion. It didn't help that Tamlen's heart was not in the hunt; if it wasn't the wind working against her at the time, it was Tamlen carelessly snapping twigs as he walked. She'd even had the beast in her distant sights once again when her reluctant hunting partner stepped on an easily-avoidable patch of dry leaves, and the ensuing _crunch_ alerted the elk.

Continuing on its trail, Eris eventually worried that she'd lost its path when Tamlen (guilty about chasing it away, Eris suspected) pointed out a small piece of its velvet hanging from a branch. Eris could have kissed him, but didn't; he was easily distracted.

"We're getting very far from camp," Tamlen announced as Eris bent close to the ground to study a hoof-print. The elk seemed to be following a small, bubbling stream. "I don't recognise this place. Don't think we've been this deep in the forest before."

"I'll have it soon, don't worry," Eris said impatiently. "We'll be back in time for a _very_ hearty supper. I'll even let you take some of the credit."

"Hah! You're just lucky I woke you up when that elk wandered into the clearing. Your snoring would've scared it away eventually."

"I do not snore!"

Tamlen smirked. "You snore like an old grizzly bear, Eris."

"Well, you... snore like an ogre, then. Like _twelve_ grizzly bears."

"Stop, you'll hurt my feelings," Tamlen deadpanned. "Keep on its trail, all right? I've gotta take a piss."

Eris distractedly waved him off. Tamlen stepped across the little stream and disappeared in the gap between two trees, and Eris carried on following the tracks she saw. Hopefully their voices hadn't carried too far.

The high midday sun above made her tracking difficult, but another print that bisected the elk's trail and led over the stream caught her eye, and she crouched down to inspect it. It was older, maybe a day or two if she had to guess, but it unmistakably belonged to a very large bear. Eris felt a chill travel down her spine as she grazed her hand over the print. Tamlen was right; they were definitely deep in the forest now. She could hear no birds or animals or anything but the wind, even when she strained her ears to listen.

The thought of stumbling across a bear—or worse, a cub—on her own put Eris on her guard enough that when Tamlen called her name in the distance, her hand lurched for her hunting knife of its own volition. Eris stood with her heart hammering in her chest, and made her way back down the trail.

"What is it?" she called out to Tamlen, a little annoyed. It was hardly worth trying to catch up to the elk now.

"Come look at this!" Tamlen called, rustling some branches in a bush ahead of Eris to let her know where he was.

"This better be good," Eris muttered mostly to herself. She had to push her way past thick brush and branches just to make her path to Tamlen. "Why did you come all this way just to—oh."

Eris looked past Tamlen and the excited disbelief on his face to see a clearing in the dense forest before her, divided by a steep and rocky crevice. A trail, overgrown but clear to her eyes, meandered down into the crevice, eventually stopping at the mouth of a cave in the rock face. Most unusual, though, were the pillars. Four crumbling, moss-covered pillars hugged the walls of the crevice, as though they were dividing the very earth. Ruined as the pillars were, the white stone they were carved from stood in stark contrast to the natural forest around them.

"I just found it!" Tamlen announced, nearly bouncing with excitement. "Do you see the cave in the crevice?"

Eris was staring at the strange scene before them, agape. "Mythal's blood, what is this?"

"No idea! Has to be an old ruin or something," Tamlen said happily. He grabbed Eris by the arm and led her closer to the crevice so that they could peer down into it. "No wonder we all missed this place when scouting; you can't really see those pillars until you're right on top of them. I heard at the _arlathvhen_ that some other clans found old temples in the forest," Tamlen continued, "I never dreamed we'd find one ourselves!"

"It's probably nothing," Eris said. "That stone looks ancient, if the cave led anywhere it's surely collapsed by now."

"There's only one way to find out," Tamlen said pointedly.

"Tamlen, to be honest I... I've got a feeling that we should make our way back." Eris felt silly saying it aloud, but she couldn't ignore the sense of wrongness she felt in the pit of her stomach. "I found a bear print. A very _large_ bear print. It led away from here but... still."

Tamlen took Eris gently by the shoulders. "Erisandril, please," he pleaded. Eris grimaced; he was pulling out her full name. He really wanted this. "If there's a hint of a bear or anything dangerous in there we'll turn around and I'll race you back to camp, I promise."

"As you say, _lethallin_ ," Eris sighed, trying her best to ignore the feeling in her gut. She'd spent the morning dragging Tamlen along on a fruitless hunt; it couldn't hurt to spend a few minutes exploring this cave.

_Carefully_.

The two made their way down the overgrown path. Eris hung back a few paces behind Tamlen, who led the way down into the cave. Solid blackness greeted them as they stepped in. Their footsteps echoed loudly against the rock around them as they made their way inside, stepping warily in the darkness. Neither of them spoke as their eyes adjusted, but Eris had her hand on the knife at her hip, and she knew Tamlen was doing the same.

Eventually they saw dim light ahead, and the space widened to let them in. They entered a carved stone ante-chamber, lit up by gaps in the ceiling that let in some of the warm sunlight from outside. The ruin itself was cold, though. Wind whistled through fractures in the stonework.

Tamlen stared around the chamber in wonder. "What is this place? Do you think it's elven?"

"I have no idea," Eris whispered. She couldn't hear any sound but the wind, but she kept one hand on her knife and the other at the bow string slung across her chest, ready to draw either at a moment's notice.

"Do you think elves left the Dales, came here to build?" Tamlen ran his hand reverently across the surface of a wall. Ornate lines of swirling pattern were carved into it. The years had worn away some of the details, but the remnants of dedicated stonework were still impressive.

"Maybe."

Tamlen turned to her, and in the dim light streaming in Eris saw a twinkle of awe and excitement in his eyes. "We have to explore this place. There's no telling what's inside."

A heavy, slightly rotted oak door was ajar before them. Eris waved a hand at it. "Lead the way, then."

Tamlen grabbed her hand and led them through the door, which opened into a long hallway. Rubble and loose stone littered the ground, but even in their decay, the craftsmanship of the tall stone halls was undeniable.

"Look at that," Tamlen pointed to a statue along the wall ahead of them. He rushed forward to take a closer look, but Eris grabbed his shoulder suddenly in alarm.

"Wait!" She hissed, and pointed at the floor. One of the stone tiles was slightly raised above the others around it, far too level to be simple disrepair. "That's a pressure plate, I'd bet my last kill on it."

"Your last kill was a rabbit," Tamlen teased, but he stared at the plate warily. "It can't still be active after all this time, surely?"

Eris looked around at the crumbling ceiling and along the tops of the walls. Sure enough, two small pipe chutes poked out of the walls on either side of them, pointing down at the pressure plate. "Let's not test that out, all right? Just... be careful where you walk."

The two of them walked around the plate carefully, eyes darting around the hall for further traps. Tamlen stopped in front of the statue when they reached it. "I don't recognise it," he said.

"You would, if you ever came with us on trade runs," Eris said. "That's Andraste."

"What?" Tamlen sounded disappointed. "But I thought these ruins were elven... are you sure?"

"Absolutely," Eris nodded. "They had a statue that looked like that outside the church in the last village we traded with."

"You're gonna run off and become a flat-ear one of these days, I swear," Tamlen said, shaking his head.

"And leave you behind to get into trouble on your own? Never."

Tamlen chuckled and reached for her hand, giving it an affectionate squeeze. He rubbed his thumb over the silver ring she wore, as he often did since he'd given it to her. The calluses on his finger caught on the delicate, looping metal vines. He leaned in and kissed her temple.

"Good," he said, with surprising sincerity as he drew away. Eris was glad the light was dim so he wouldn't see her blush.

They walked the halls and explored the rooms of the ruins. Nothing scarier crossed their path than spiders scuttling along the walls and a few rats scampering away when they approached. They spotted another trap each, and carefully avoided them. The ruins didn't seem to hold much in the way of furniture, and the purpose of the rooms mystified them as they discussed theories in hushed tones.

It seemed like anything small and valuable enough to be worth taking had long since been picked clean. The closest they came to finding treasure was a dusty book that lay on the floor in one of the rooms. They leafed through it carefully, but the pages were rotted and a lot of the writing was worn away. What they could see of it in the dark appeared to be old elven script, and after a short argument on who'd carry it, Tamlen placed the book in his pack to present to the Keeper.

They came upon another statue in a side-room. Understandably, as his own tattoos honoured this particular deity, Tamlen was the first to recognise it this time. "It's Falon'Din," he said. Though time had taken a few pieces from the carving, the stone wings of Falon'Din's owl spread from the back of the statue. "It looks like some kind of altar, if I had to guess."

"Yeah, that's an offering bowl," Eris said, indicating the chipped bowl carved into the base of the statue.

"So we've got a statue of Andraste and an altar to Falon'Din in one building. What kind of place was this?" Tamlen murmured. He touched the head of the statue in awe, and Eris winced.

"You know, every time you touch something in here I worry we're about to get blown up or something."

Eris expected him to joke in response, but he grimaced. "I know what you mean. This place feels... sinister. Like the air's heavy. I don't know."

"I think the Veil is thin here, Tamlen. We should go back." Eris suggested. "I mean, we've got that book to show for it. We can come back with more of the hunters. Maybe Merrill, too."

Tamlen frowned. "Aren't you curious what else could be inside? We've got to be coming up on a main hall or something."

Eris _was_ curious, but that didn't mean they should be this deep inside a strange ruin alone. She nervously tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "Just a little further," Eris finally agreed. "I want to get back to camp before dark."

Tamlen's face lit up. "We will."

He led them even further down the winding hall. Eris was not as caught up in the adventure of exploring as Tamlen was, and the further they got into the ruins, the more she felt that heavy sense of something _wrong_. Their progress was slow due to their caution. Eris kept a mental note of the route they took and any traps they encountered, just in case they had to leave quickly.

It didn't take long before they came upon the hall Tamlen had theorised about. A double oak door, grand even in its decay, parted with a creak to let them in.

"What is _that_ ," Tamlen breathed, as the two of them were bathed in brilliant blue light. Eris blinked against it as her eyes adjusted, and saw, in the middle of the room and raised on what must have once been a grand dais, was a towering, glittering mirror.

Tamlen's mouth was agape as he stepped toward it—and directly onto a pressure plate.

"Tamlen, no!" Eris yelled, and dived toward him. She slammed herself bodily into him and the two of them fell in a heap to the right of the plate, narrowly avoiding a long, hot blast of flame that erupted from a hidden pipe in the ceiling. They clutched each other as the flame eventually died down. Adrenaline surged through Eris; she felt herself shaking in Tamlen's arms.

"You idiot," she said, grinning at Tamlen.

Tamlen laughed. "Guess we know the traps still work. Thank you, _vhenan_."

Eris's heart fluttered at the name, and then it dropped in her chest. From the corner of her eye, she saw a massive, lumbering beast stir from behind the strange mirror, and roar at the noisy interruption. The two elves both leapt to their feet, bows drawn and arrows ready to fire.

It was a bear... but it wasn't. As it came fully into view, lit by the strange blue light emanating from the mirror, Eris saw that it was half again as large as any bear she'd ever seen. Its flesh was furless and mottled with disease, sloughing off of it in chunks in some places, and on its back were long, spiky growths erupting from its skin. It stared at them with great black eyes, sizing them up.

"Shit," Eris said under her breath. Without hesitating, Tamlen let his arrow fly.

It hit the beast square in the jaw, and the diseased bear swatted at it, breaking the shaft off and burying the arrowhead deeper into its skin. It roared again, this time in unmistakable rage, and charged.

Eris loosed her arrow at it too, then dove to the left while Tamlen dodged right. Eris knew her arrow had hit but didn't see where, as the bear had rounded on Tamlen. It reared up on its hind legs, its paw raised in the air to strike down with its deadly claws. Tamlen rolled out of the way, but the claws caught his back as he did, and Eris saw a gash in his armour growing wet with blood.

"No!" Eris cried. Without thinking, she grabbed her knife and charged for the bear. It was still focused on Tamlen, but she grabbed one of the spiny growths on its back and hoisted herself up, trying to reach its great head to sink her knife into its brain. Its full height was more than she anticipated, however, and her blade sank between the bear's shoulders instead. It roared again, swaying back. Eris barely had time to yank her knife out before she fell and hit the stone floor hard, the bear rounding on her now.

Another two arrows appeared in its side as it approached Eris, but it hardly seemed to notice. Eris scrambled back, trying to get to her feet, but the great, rotted bear had its gaze fixed on her and for a moment her mind couldn't seem to direct her legs to stand.

The bear lunged at her, its massive jaw snapping. Eris caught a whiff of corpse-foul breath as she dodged out of the way. The bear's jaws just narrowly closed on thin air. It snapped at her again, but she kicked out with her foot as hard as she could, aiming for the broken arrowhead lodged in its jaw. It growled in pain as she drove the arrow deeper with a sickening crunch against bone, and while the bear was stunned for a moment, Eris finally got to her feet. It charged for her again, much faster than she'd have thought it could. She steeled herself, letting it build up its momentum, then bluffed its charge; diving out of its way just in time to avoid its maw again.

"Are you all right?" She yelled at Tamlen as she ran up next to him. He loosed another arrow at the bear, this time hitting its rump just before it rounded on them again.

"Fine!" He said. Then, less helpfully: "We gotta kill this thing!"

The bear was on them again, still quick for all the arrows digging into it. Another of Tamlen's arrows hit one of the long, bony spines protruding from its back and bounced off, clattering to the floor. The beast closed the space between them quickly, once again drawing its sickly maw open to attack—

Eris lunged toward its head, and lodged her knife straight into the bear's mouth. One of Tamlen's arrows whizzed by her head and landed in the bear's shoulder. Eris could hear Tamlen swear at the close call, but couldn't make out his words through the bears furious roar of pain as it instinctively closed its mouth around the blade, driving it even deeper.

Knife-less, Eris grabbed an arrow from her quiver and held it at the ready like a spear. She danced to the left but the bear swayed dangerously, and one of its massive spines caught her on the forearm as she raised it to protect her face.

She could feel the sensation of her arm slicing open, but she felt no pain even as she saw blood drip thickly down onto the floor. The bear reared up again, ready to strike with its massive claws. Eris heard Tamlen shout, and his arrow flew true. It hit the bear square between the eyes, burying itself deep into its head.

In the split second where she realised what had happened, Eris expected the bear to sway and fall dramatically. What happened instead was its momentum almost instantly dropped, and all of its massive weight crumpled directly on top of her.

She managed to fall with as much grace as someone collapsing beneath the weight of a colossal, diseased bear could. She shielded her face with both her arms, supporting some of its weight away from her head, at least. Tamlen exclaimed in horror and immediately she felt him pushing desperately at the bear's gigantic corpse.

It rolled off of her clumsily, and Eris found herself blinking up at Tamlen. " _Lethallan_!" He cried, clutching Eris's face in his hands. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please be okay!"

Absurdly, Eris laughed. "You're saying you didn't mean to crush me with the spike-demon?"

Tamlen laughed too, his relief palpable. "Oh, blessed Creators, I thought I'd killed you." He pulled Eris into his arms.

"No, you nailed that bear right between the eyes is what you did."

Tamlen laughed a little hysterically, and looked down at Eris's arm, "Elgar'nan, you're bleeding,"

"So are you; that thing swiped you right on the back," Eris said as the two helped each other shakily to their feet. "You're lucky you're alive."

"You're lucky you still have an arm after that stunt," Tamlen said.

Eris leaned down next to the head of the bear. The handle of her blade glinted from behind its teeth. She grimaced as she wrenched its great maw open, sliding her knife out of the roof of its mouth.

Tamlen blew out a shaky breath as he watched Eris pull her knife out. "Look at those teeth," he said. "Glad it didn't get a bite out of us." Eris wiped the blade clean on the bear's rough pelt with distaste. Up close, out of the heat of battle, she couldn't draw her eyes away from whatever strange disease plagued its skin. "But what is it?" Tamlen continued. "It could've _actually_ been a demon for all we know. I've never seen a sickness like that on any animal."

"It's troubling," Eris said. "We can tell Maren about it when we get back; we can't have something like this spreading to the halla. Right now, we need to stop bleeding all over these nice ancient floors."

They helped clean and pour some water from Eris's waterskin over each other's wounds. The gash on Eris's arm didn't seem in a hurry to stop bleeding, so Tamlen ripped off a strip of fabric from his undershirt to tie around it as a makeshift bandage.

"It'll need stitches," he told her as he finished securing the fabric to her arm.

"Wonderful," Eris pursed her lips. Tamlen smiled at her.

"It won't be that bad," he said, still holding her hand. "It'll make a fantastic battle scar."

Eris laughed, and kissed Tamlen on the mouth, still feeling the rush of the fight. "All right, let's get back. What a sight we'll be, stumbling into camp covered in bear-blood. And some of our own, I guess."

"You can't want to leave without getting a closer look at _that_." Tamlen gestured toward the towering mirror in the middle of the room, still bathing them in its blue light.

"It's just some old magic mirror, Tamlen. Let's leave it to the Keeper and Merrill to mess with. I think we've had enough trouble for one day."

"'Just' a magic mirror," Tamlen scoffed. He dropped her hand and made his way to the mirror, and Eris reluctantly followed him up the dais. "It's beautiful, isn't it? See that inscription around the glass? I wonder what it says."

Eris glanced at it. It was old elven script, like in the book they'd found. Though they spoke elven, reading the ancient runic script was an entirely different beast. "'Do not touch'...?" She suggested.

Tamlen ignored her. "Look at the surface," He said, almost to himself. "It's been here Creators-know how long, and it's completely clean. Not even a fingerprint."

The heaviness that Eris thought had left the ruins once they killed the bear seemed to envelop her again all at once, like a sheet of ice wrapping its way around her body. "Seriously, we should go."

"Did you see that?" Tamlen said, eyes wide. "Something moved inside of it!"

"I didn't see anything," Eris said. She was trying _not_ to look at it. Staring at its surface gave her a distinct sense of dread, but Tamlen seemed absolutely transfixed.

"There it is again!" Tamlen gasped. Eris finally looked at it, and its surface was indeed turning murky, their own faces starting to move and distort in the reflection. Something _was_ moving inside of it. The sense of dread it gave her calcified into something physical, and Eris was hit by a wave of nausea so strong that she struggled to speak. Lights sparked and popped behind her eyes, and she cradled her head in her hands as the floor seemed to spin beneath her.

"Tamlen... we have to leave."

Whatever malaise Eris felt when she looked upon the mirror, it was clear Tamlen felt none of it. It was as though he was in a trance. He ignored her again as he drew even closer to the mirror. Their reflections were almost completely gone from its surface, replaced by oily swirls of blue and silver. "I think it knows we're here."

Eris wrenched her head up to stare at Tamlen in alarm. "What do you mean, 'it _knows_ '?"

"It's trying to show me something. Can you see it?"

When Eris tried to glance back at it she saw, to her horror, Tamlen reaching out a hand for the mirror's surface.

It seemed to respond to his touch; inky ripples spread from his fingertips and the swirls of colour seemed to grow excited in their movements. "It's showing me places... _beautiful_ places… I've never seen anything so wonderful..." Eris had never heard Tamlen speak this way before. She reached out a shaky hand to grasp his shoulder, but he didn't give any indication that he'd noticed her touch at all.

"Tamlen—"

"There's a darkness..." the excitement in Tamlen's voice gave way to a fear that Eris had never heard from him before. "It's covering… _everything._ " Tamlen gasped suddenly, and his voice rose to a shout of terror. "It sees me!"

Eris tried desperately to tug him away from the mirror, but Tamlen wouldn't, or couldn't move. "Help!" He screamed, "HELP! I CAN'T LOOK AWAY!"

A burst of blinding white energy knocked Eris off the dais, and everything went black.


	2. The Lamb and the Knife

As Duncan had wandered the forest carrying the near-lifeless body of one of the Dalish, he had half-expected to be pin cushioned by arrows the moment he found them. Or rather, when they found him. He knew no one had simply stumbled across a Dalish camp without encountering their scouts first.

In the darkness of the forest, he had seen the elves' eyes first; they glinted like cat-eyes in the shadowy gaps between the trees where they watched him. Then, one by one, they crept from their hiding places with arrows trained on him. Their questions had been angry, and for a moment he feared they would attack—but eventually they seemed to believe him when he insisted that the young woman in his arms was still alive, and that he had only been trying to help her.

One of the hunters took her barely-breathing body from him and carried her away into the darkness of the trees. The rest stared at him with suspicion and, in one or two cases, outright hostility when he requested an audience with their Keeper. They had objected, of course, even when he introduced himself as the Commander of the Grey Wardens and offered to surrender his weapons to them. It was only when he mentioned that he may know a cure for the sick elf that their suspicion began to crack and give way to concern.

They had taken the two blades he carried: his silverite longsword, with a handsome cross-guard that was styled in the twin griffons of his order, and the more humble red steel dagger he used in his offhand. It was a display of trust that, in truth, didn't cost him much—slightly more distressing had been when they had taken his horse, Merri's lead, but he knew he had little choice. And he knew that neither weapons nor horse would have made a difference to the dozen Dalish arrows which would be trained on him from the shadows as he spoke with the Keeper. All he could do was show them that he truly meant no harm. Diplomacy could be more effective than any blade. It was a lesson that had taken him a long time to learn, but he exercised it as often as he could now.

The elves had reluctantly led him through a winding path to their camp, with threats of retribution if he tried anything as they allowed him to approach the Keeper. He had expected no less.

The Keeper they had led him to was an apostate, as was the Dalish way. She was an imposing woman, tall even by human standards, spindly and resplendent in her strange grey robes. She had greeted him with a lofty sort of caution, and Duncan had felt her pale yellow eyes boring into him as though she could read his intentions like a book. Perhaps she could. Duncan was not well-versed in the arcane, and certainly the Dalish elves had their own practices beyond the boundaries of Circle magic.

Fortunately, the Keeper had expressed her gratitude to Duncan, and seemed to bear more respect for the Wardens than Duncan was used to. She had asked him many questions, and he had had few answers to give save for where he had found the young woman: dragging herself, half-conscious, from a cave in the night before collapsing as he reached her.

Duncan had told the Keeper that he believed the darkspawn taint was responsible for the girl's illness, and intended to investigate the area he'd found her in for the source of it. In return, the Keeper confided in Duncan that her clan was missing another of their hunters, who they believed had been with the young woman he'd found. She sent a number of her own people to accompany him back to the cave in search of their missing clan-mate. His weapons were returned to him at the border of the camp, and he'd lit his lantern to guide his way.

Most of the hunters avoided him, instead staying close to one another and speaking amongst themselves in their strange, lilting tongue, but he found himself grateful for their presence all the same. Navigating forests had never been a strength of his, and there was no forest in Ferelden more vast and labyrinthine than the Brecilian. The Dalish walked the winding trails in the wan, pre-dawn light the same way Duncan might walk the cobbled, sunlit streets of Denerim.

Somewhat friendlier, in a wide-eyed and curious sort of way that bordered on impolite, was the mage that the Keeper had sent along as well. Duncan had wondered if the Keeper had sent her young, raven-haired apprentice to watch for darkspawn or to watch him. Perhaps a bit of both. She'd asked him a bevy of questions as well, though again he'd had few answers to give—only that if they encountered darkspawn, it was imperative to avoid their blood.

The hunters seemed incredulous at the idea of darkspawn in the forest, and Duncan was relieved to hear that they had not seen any in their wanderings. That would have meant the creatures had either slipped past the scouts at Ostagar, or else dug up another entrance to the surface from the Deep Roads where they dwelled beneath the earth. Neither option boded well.

When they found the cave—and Duncan's directions had not made it particularly easy for the elves, even with their sense for the forest—they did indeed find darkspawn, however. The skills of the Dalish had not been exaggerated; no sooner would a darkspawn appear than it would seem to sprout arrows from its head. He had heard the Dalish were fearsome, but had wondered how much of that was superstitious nonsense; these Dalish, at least, were admirable fighters, and did not quail at the sight of the darkspawn where lesser warriors might. He would need that courage for what was to come. They all would.

The cave concealed no crudely-dug entrance to the Deep Roads, however. Instead, the entrance they found led them inside crumbling, ancient ruins that held a half-dozen more darkspawn that were dispatched as easily as before.

Duncan allowed himself a moment to catch his breath after the fight. He picked up the lantern he'd looped to his belt and looked around at the elves, but there was something else that caught his eye.

A shaft of gently twinkling blue light was falling from an open door in the hall ahead. It softly illuminated the motes of dust that had been disturbed by their skirmish with the creatures. Duncan sensed no more darkspawn—they would prickle at his senses, like ghostly needles on the skin—but he felt a coldness in the ruin that was not borne of darkness and stone.

Cautiously, he entered the room, with the elves falling in step behind him. It was circular in design, with a high vaulted ceiling that had crumbled away in places where tree roots had dug in from the earth above. Looking at the ground, the first thing he saw was the corpse of a bereskarn riddled with arrows. His eyes were drawn irresistibly upward, though, toward the mirror.

It was a towering thing, perhaps three times as tall as he, which explained the need for the room's high ceiling. A hush fell over their group as they all took in the sight of it, and realised that it was not reflecting that strange blue light, but _producing_ it.

Duncan had never seen such a thing before. The mirror glimmered innocently, but as he gazed into his own reflection he couldn't help but feel like a field mouse staring at the shadow of an owl in the leaves.

Here, the needly sensation of darkspawn gave way to something deeper. Something that turned his gut. This mirror—whatever it was, whatever it used to be—was corrupted by the Blight.

"This is it," Duncan told the elves, not taking his eyes off the thing. "This is what sickened your clan-mate. I am unsure how, but this mirror is tainted. It must be destroyed."

The young mage—Merrill, she'd said—pushed her way between the shoulders of the hunters. "No!" She cried, and ran past him. The slap of her bare feet on the stone echoed in the hall, but she stopped short of the dais where the mirror stood. She turned around to face them all, looking sheepish. "I… I mean, if this is what sickened Eris, then the Keeper and I must study it."

"It is not the mirror itself that sickened your clan-mate, Merrill," Duncan said, as gently as he could. He would not provoke the elves, but nor would he forget his duties as Warden-Commander. There was only one course, here. "It is the taint within it. There is no way to cleanse such an object. It can only be destroyed before it spreads further. Before it draws more darkspawn, before it harms more of your clan."

"But… but do you know what this _is_?" Merrill pleaded. "This is an artefact of our people; a glimpse of our past! It must _mean_ something that we found it here! It must be preserved, and studied, it—"

One of the hunters, a stocky blond elf who'd taken the time to introduce himself to Duncan as Fenarel, stepped from the group and toward Merrill. He put a gloved hand on her shoulder, and spoke to her quietly in elven. Duncan looked away respectfully. He couldn't understand their language, nor could he really hear what the elf was saying anyway, but he knew that whatever it was, it was not meant for him.

The elves had much of their past taken from them at the hands of humans, and what hadn't been taken was lost through time. The Dalish chose a life away from humans and cities, so that their traditions could be preserved and their history remembered. He knew he couldn't understand the grief Merrill must feel. It was the least he could do to give her a moment.

Merrill slid her arm away from Fenarel, and turned to give Duncan a fleeting, tremulous look. "Do what you must."

She turned her back from them all as Duncan stepped forward. He climbed the steps up the dais with his sword raised, uncertain what would happen once the mirror was destroyed. It glinted at him, as though blinking, watching, waiting to see if he would dare do what he had to.

Duncan watched as his reflection raised his sword and brought it down upon the glass. It shattered like any normal mirror would, the shards of it breaking from the stone frame and scattering across the ground. As though a fog had lifted, the atmosphere in the room changed. Though the blue light was snuffed out, the room seemed brighter; warmer somehow. Duncan felt like he could finally, truly breathe, in a way he hadn't since entering the ruins.

"It is done," he told the elves as he descended the steps.

"Our work isn't, though," said one of the elves in the group. Ineria, Duncan thought he'd heard her called. Her amber eyes were darkened by the severe slope of her brow, set in furious determination. "Tamlen is still missing. We will search for him."

Duncan gave a heavy, sad sigh. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid this Tamlen has little hope. If he is still out here, he has been alone, unattended, after meeting a source of the darkspawn taint as strong as this mirror."

Ineria drew her lips back, baring her teeth. "We don't abandon our people, shem."

" _Ea atisha, lethallan_." To Duncan's surprise, it was Merrill who spoke. She had taken a seat on the steps of the dais behind him, carefully perching herself amongst the glittering shards of glass. "The Warden is only trying to help. I will take him back to camp, see if I can assist the Keeper with Eris. You and the others stay and search for Tamlen." Her eyes looked hollow, her face was ashen, and her orders sounded out of place in her warble of a voice. The hunters listened, however, and Duncan watched them disperse into smaller groups as he and Merrill stepped into the sunlight outside the cave. Some stayed behind to further search the ruins, others climbed the trees outside to get a better vantage of the area, others still bent low to the ground to search for tracks. The elves worked together like ants in a colony, each carrying out their role with a singular focus, encompassing their part in the admirably thorough whole. If any group could track down someone lost, it must be the Dalish, Duncan thought. Even if there would only be a body left to find.

Their journey back to the Dalish camp was made easier by the morning sun, though Duncan still felt unwieldy navigating the thicker patches of brush and trees. Twice, Merrill had gone ahead of him and disappeared, and he'd had to call for her. The second time, she poked her head out from behind a tree ahead, hopping easily down onto a rock to wait for him. She had been uncharacteristically quiet, and Duncan thought she must harbour some anger toward him.

When he caught up to her, she was sucking on the tip of her index finger. She popped it from her mouth, and Duncan saw a little bead of blood well up on a scratch in her skin. "You touched a thorn?"

"Hm?" Merrill blinked up at him, as though just realising he was there. "Oh! Yes, just a thorn. We're almost back to camp, come on."

Merrill hoisted herself back up the hill with the help of her mage's staff, and Duncan followed in her wake, trying his best to keep up with the long-legged elf's confident strides. When he finally matched her pace and fell into step beside her, he took his chance to apologise.

"I am sorry for what happened with the mirror. It would not be the first precious thing to become corrupted by the Blight."

Merrill looked surprised, as though her mind had been elsewhere. "Oh, yes. I understand," she placed her free hand in the pocket of her emerald green tunic, fidgeting with something inside. "I suppose you must see some very sad things, as a Warden."

The elf seemed only to be making an observation, not pressing him to share, and for that Duncan was grateful. He expected sadder things were only to come.

They were greeted by an elder as they came upon the Dalish camp. Duncan offered to relinquish his weapons again, but the woman waved him off as Merrill slipped away. "Keep them," she told him. Her accent was so thick it took Duncan a moment to understand her. "You are a Grey Warden. The Dalish remember."

The camp was quieter than it had been when Duncan had first arrived. It seemed only the very old and very young had stayed behind, while everyone able was on the search for their missing hunter. He knew that few humans were ever invited to Dalish camps, and in the quiet he took in the sights of their home in wonderment.

There were a dozen or more wooden landships around the camp of varying sizes, though all bore the same magnificent emerald sails on their hoods. Most places considered the sight of Dalish sails a warning to flee, though Duncan didn't get the impression this clan wanted anything more than to be left in peace. He idly wondered what role the landships played in their clan. Surely some of them must be homes, but then there were tents in bonny shades of blues, yellows and greens that dotted the clearing that some of the elves must sleep in, as well. Some looked like they could hold a family, while others were smaller and more patchwork in their making. Duncan passed a group of elders sitting on blankets outside one of these tents, holding babies in their laps or entertaining the young children that darted about the camp. One of the men smoked a long pipe as he worked on stitching a length of cloth, while a woman crushed herbs in a mortar and pestle with hands that were at once strong and wizened. Another braided the hair of a little girl who watched Duncan from doleful brown eyes rimmed with heavy lashes as he walked to his own tent near the pen where the Dalish kept their halla.

The halla were magnificent beasts; like deer, but taller and stronger, with grey-white fur and twisting antlers that the Dalish guided into ethereal shapes as they grew. Merri, Duncan's beloved Antivan buckskin, had seemed wary of the creatures at first. Now, she grazed happily at the tall grass with them. He folded his arms over the fence and watched her for a moment, idly wondering if the Dalish tore down and rebuilt the stable and fencing every time they pulled up camp. Theirs must be a life filled with hard work and toil, so different from the life he had known in the cities he'd grown up in.

Leaving Merri to her grazing, Duncan was pleased to see someone had left a bucket of clean water next to his tent. He found a rag in his pack, using it to wipe the grime and sweat of the day off his face and neck. He sat on the grass and wrung out the rag to clean his sword with, and he spotted an aged but burly elf standing nearby at the boundaries of the camp. He must have been there for some time, but in his clothes of green and brown he'd blended in amongst the trees. Next to him was a stone statue of a wolf laying in the grass, its carved eyes scanning the boundary of the camp. Duncan had seen a few similar statues around the camp, and as he watched the elderly man cradle the head of the lupine stone like one might absent-mindedly stroke a pet, he wondered if they were depictions of their pagan gods.

The man seemed to sense Duncan's gaze. He glanced to the side and gave him a smirk, the faded ink on his weathered skin twisting as he did.

"You are far from home, _shemlen_ ," the man said, with no ire in his voice.

"My home is where my order's business takes me, _hahren_."

If the elf was impressed with Duncan's most basic knowledge of some key elven titles, he didn't show it. "And what could this forest hold for the business of Wardens?"

Duncan set his sword aside and scratched his chin. "It is less the forest, and more those within. The Dalish have served the Wardens with distinction in the past. I had hoped to meet with a clan and see if they would honour the old treaties with a recruit."

The elf's leathery face twitched. "Providence then, that you would save one of our daughters in the forest before asking us for aid."

Duncan sighed. "I am afraid she is not saved yet, _hahren._ "

Green light shone from the Keeper's landship, and the elf didn't turn his head. Duncan expected the Dalish were more accustomed to displays of magic than most in Ferelden, barring the Circle of Magi itself.

The elf let his hand fall away from the wolf. "Keeper Marethari will do what she can." Under his breath, he muttered something to himself in elven, then shook his head as if to clear it. "You'll excuse us, Warden, if the welcome my clan gives you is less than warm. Grey Wardens bring few good omens."

The slam of a door drew Duncan's eyes as the aged elf walked away with a hard limp. He watched as a young woman emerged from the Keeper's wagon. Surely this could not be the same elf he brought into the camp last night; she had been at death's door and barely breathing. But as he watched the elf stride across the camp and stop to stare at Duncan's own horse grazing in the halla pen, he realised it must be. She had the same flaxen hair braided away from her face and tumbling down her back, though it was much cleaner now than it had been when he'd found her dying in the dirt. If Duncan didn't know as much as he did about the darkspawn taint, he might have thought the young woman completely recovered. The fresh stitches in her forearm were the only hint to what she'd been through.

The Keeper walked out of her wagon after the girl, and her eyes went straight to Duncan and his little tent. Duncan saw her face lined with worry and some other emotion that was hard for him to make out beneath the swirling patterns of faded gold ink in her skin. He stood as she came to him.

"I hope hahren Yehvel did not bring you trouble," she said, glancing sidelong at the old elven man who'd limped away. "It is an ill time for our clan, and some of us can be… superstitious."

"But not you, Keeper?"

The woman gave him a weary smile. "I have no time for such things. Not with Tamlen missing and Erisandril sick… though sadly the sickness has sapped none of her stubbornness."

Duncan couldn't help but grin. "Perhaps that is for the best. Erisandril—that is the young hunter I found?"

"The very same," said the Keeper, and sighed. They watched the girl pick up a bow and arrow, and slink away into the forest. "She insists on joining the search party at the ruins. She was close with our missing hunter; it is difficult for her to think that he may be lost to us."

Duncan could see that the idea was difficult for the Keeper, too, though she had many other elves under her care whose safety she had to consider. "I offer my condolences, Keeper, for what they are worth."

"Please, call me Marethari," she said, inclining her head politely. "You have done us a great service by bringing her to us and destroying the mirror that caused all this, though I admit I had hoped to study it. Find some cure for this sickness. Eris says she feels fine, though I sense something in her. Is this the taint you speak of, Duncan? Will it spread to the rest of us?"

"It could, but it is unlikely, now that the mirror is destroyed. It is the darkspawn or their blood that spread it. Becoming tainted is not unlike a wasting sickness, though if one survives the initial exposure, the disease takes longer to… run its course," Duncan explained as gently as he could. "It is a terrible fate."

Marethari looked past Duncan, deep in worried thought. Her clever hands toyed with the amulet around her neck; a silvery tree with many looping branches. "Is there nothing that can be done? To lose two of our clan's children… I would do whatever it takes to help her."

Duncan steeled himself for what he knew would be a delicate topic. "There is one cure that I know of, Keeper, but is not easy. Even with your magical healing, that this Eris has recovered enough to venture back in search of her clan-mate speaks to her will. Tell me: is she as skilled with a bow as the rest of your hunters?"

Keeper Marethari blinked in surprise. "Without a doubt," she told him. "She is a fine tracker and markswoman—perhaps one of our best, if the contests our young hunters have amongst themselves have any bearing to you."

"Then I propose this: allow her to leave with me for Ostagar tomorrow morning and become a Grey Warden. Joining us will grant her an immunity to the taint that dwells inside her now, and allow her to fight the darkspawn beside us."

Marethari stiffened. Duncan prepared himself for any manner of reaction—suspicion, hostility, gratitude, disbelief. But the Keeper was measured in this, as she seemed to be in all things. "You would have one of the Dalish join your order?" Not the first question he'd expected. But the best he could hope for.

"Yes. You asked last night why I was in the area, and in truth I was searching for your clan," Duncan allowed himself a moment to take a deep, steadying breath. His duty may have been to be the bearer of such ill news, but he didn't relish it. "The evil your clan has encountered is only a small piece of what is ripening at Ostagar, and soon that evil will spread to swallow the world if it is not ended swiftly. Many of Ferelden's armies have gathered there to fight a surge of darkspawn. The King's advisors hope that this is merely a large raid; I am not so hopeful. I believe this is the beginning of a Blight."

Marethari's lips tightened and she flinched, an elven curse escaping beneath her breath. "It cannot be."

"It can. It is. Whether a King or priest or mage should hope otherwise, nothing but the wakening of an Archdemon could compel the darkspawn to the surface in the numbers we have seen at Ostagar. Nor would those of my order sense the darkspawn prowling beneath the earth were this just a senseless, unfocused thrust. We believe the horde is preparing to attack, and the Archdemon will follow soon after."

Wind rustled the grass beneath their feet, and sent loose wisps of white hair about Marethari's face like a cloud. The laughter and chatter of the elders and the children in the camp around them made Duncan feel like an intruder, as though he brought the words that cut the wind. The Blight would bring all their hard-won community to ruin, and the Dalish had no great army that would defend their home if the darkspawn were left unchecked. He pleaded silently for the woman to understand, to feel the same call to action that he did. To lend one of her own as a shield against the tide of the Blight.

At Marethari's silence, Duncan continued. "Elves have always served the Grey Wardens with distinction. When your hunters battled darkspawn in the ruins with me, I saw that stories of the Dalish skill in archery are no idle rumour. I came seeking a Dalish clan to see if any of your number would be willing to join us at Ostagar and help battle this Blight. That it may be this young hunter's salvation is some balm for this wound, I hope."

"A balm. Or fate, perhaps," Marethari said slowly. Her limpid eyes looked past him, deep in thought. "Yes. Let us speak with Eris when she returns. I will not call her away from this search; I believe she will need it before she can move on."

Duncan inclined his head in deference. "As you say, Keeper."

* * *

The night had grown heavy with stars before the first of the search party began to return. Duncan watched them from the crackling bonfire where the Keeper had invited him to sup with her clan, though he made sure not to draw too much attention to himself. He was sure the Dalish were wary of lingering human eyes. The hunters dropped themselves into seats at the benches around the flames, and from the slump of their shoulders Duncan got the impression they had found nothing at all.

After talking with some of the hunters, the Keeper took a seat next to Duncan on the bench. She passed a wooden spoon and a bowl of stew with a tangy scent to him, which he accepted gratefully; he hadn't had a hot meal in weeks. He held the dish in his hands for a moment, not wanting to offend if there existed any Dalish customs around mealtimes, but once he saw everyone digging in he joined them.

With nearly all the clan gathered in the rows of benches that circled the fire, Duncan imagined their meals together were usually a jovial affair, but the absence of their missing hunter left a gaping maw in the camp that even Duncan could sense. The elves spoke amongst themselves in hushed tones, their faces sullen and serious. The only other sounds were of the night insects around them, and the clink of spoons against bowls.

The stew was an interesting one. He had expected the taste of game meat, but instead tasted no meat at all. The dish was based around noodles that he suspected were made from a vegetable, and bathed in a rich, cheesy garlic-butter sauce. Duncan tasted mushrooms, elfroot, peppers, and something similar to tomato but with a distinct and slightly unsettling _pop_ as he bit into it. He was no picky eater, but the stew was hearty and delicious.

Casting his eyes around the fire, Duncan spotted hahren Yehvel's face among the crowd. He was looking even more grim in the deep shadows cast by the flickering fire as he spoke with a woman next to him.

Once they'd had a few minutes to eat, Keeper Marethari spoke. "Thank you for joining us at the fire, Duncan."

"No, thank you," Duncan said sincerely. "This has been a terrible time for your clan; I had hoped for none of the hospitality I have generously received."

Merrill, sitting on the Keeper's other side, leaned forward to stare at him with those strange, wide eyes of hers. “I imagine you expected none at all, from what the humans say about us."

Keeper Marethari looked ready to issue a rebuke, but Duncan waved her off. "It's all right, Keeper," he said, and gave Merrill a reassuring smile. "In truth, I had no idea what to expect when I came upon your clan, especially finding you the way I did."

"The circumstances were certainly unusual," Marethari agreed. "You are no true stranger here, however. We often recite the tale of the elven Warden Garahel, who slew the Archdemon of the last Blight. As the Commander of the Grey Wardens, your order protects everyone, including us. All of us know of the Grey Wardens' deeds."

Duncan smiled ruefully. "That is more than I can say for most of Ferelden. Though with so much time between Blights, I can understand why one might prefer to think them a terrible legend."

"It's true then?" Hahren Yehvel spoke from across the fire, and Duncan wondered exactly how sharp elven ears were. "You believe there is a Blight upon us?" A hush grew over them all, and Duncan felt every elven eye in the camp on him.

"With all of my soul, _hahren_."

Chatter broke out amongst the elves again, frantic and frightened. Duncan watched the little elven girl whose hair he'd seen braided earlier reach up to tug on her grandmother's sleeve, tears growing in her eyes.

Marethari's grip on her bowl tightened. "Our clan may not be safe this far south. We will have to move on soon."

"The King believes the horde can be pushed back at Ostagar," Duncan said, "but I confess, I do not share his confidence. It may be wise to get your people as far north as you can."

"Moving on while Tamlen remains missing…" the Keeper set her bowl aside and clutched her lined hands together in her lap, shaking her head slowly. "Do you believe the human armies will be overwhelmed?"

Duncan cleared his throat. He wasn't certain how much Keeper Marethari knew of the affairs of humans, and though this was an enemy all of Ferelden agreed must be defeated, this war was already fraught with politics. "I believe no Blight has ever been defeated with so little effort. We have sought permission for the Orlesian branch of our order to cross the border and lend us their numbers, but we have had little luck. There are those with the ear of the King who believe the Orlesians could be a greater threat than the darkspawn."

The Keeper smoothed the skirts of her robe with a bitter smile. "I was Second to this clan during the Orlesian occupation of these lands. Those years were a horror for us, as well. Many of my people believe themselves apart from Ferelden, but we are always within it."

"That is what I continually told myself," Duncan said, allowing himself a self-deprecating smile, "As I blundered around the forest in search of you, Keeper."

Keeper Marethari gave a light, pretty laugh that faded all too soon. "Our gods may differ, Duncan of the Grey, but I will pray to mine for your victory."

When the meal was finished, three elves went around with woven baskets to collect all the bowls and spoons, among them a young boy with a mop of tight, dark curls. He stared at Duncan with a wide, toothy grin, leaving only when an adult beckoned him away. Slowly, the elves drifted from the bonfire, tending to various chores or retreating into their tents and wagons. The elves with dish-laden baskets carried them out into the forest and disappeared into the trees, perhaps to wash them in some stream Duncan had failed to notice. The Keeper stood and gestured for Duncan to follow her. "It is time," she told him.

Duncan turned to see where her gaze rested, relieved to see Eris finally back at the camp. She and the blond elf, Fenarel, were the last back from the search and lingering at the edge of the forest to talk. Well, Fenarel was talking. Eris looked hollow as she stared at the dirt.

Keeper Marethari led the way to them. " _Savhalla_ , Fenarel," the Keeper said to the young man. " _Sathan, lasa em'an dirth_."

The young man bowed his head respectfully. " _Ma nuvenin, Amelan._ " He walked away, glancing back at Eris as he did. The three of them were alone as they could be.

Surprisingly, Eris spoke first. She snapped her head up to look at Duncan with doleful, serious eyes. "You are the Grey Warden who saved me. I have no memory of any of it, but I thank you." Like the other elves, her voice was clipped; lilting a little strangely around the King's Tongue that was not entirely at home in their mouths.

"You are welcome," Duncan said. "Have you found no trace of your clan-mate?"

The girl stiffened, and her eyes widened a little, but she spoke evenly. "No," she said, and glanced at the Keeper. "They say… he will not be found. That he has the same sickness I had."

"I believe it to be true. The mirror you found released the darkspawn taint into both of you. That you have survived this far, even with your Keeper's help," Duncan nodded at Marethari, "is nothing short of remarkable. But you are not cured yet, I'm afraid."

"I have spoken with the Grey Warden, Erisandril," the Keeper said to Eris. "He has a proposal for you."

Eris's hands were clenched into fists at her side. Duncan wasn't vain enough to believe whatever feelings was holding back were directed at him, so he cleared his throat. "My order is in need of skilled help, and you are in need of a cure for the darkspawn taint that only the Wardens can provide. When I leave in the morning, I hope you will join me."

The girl's gaze darted uncertainly between Duncan and the Keeper, as though she thought they were making some bizarre joke. "I don't need any cure. I feel fine."

Keeper Marethari took Eris by the cheek. The gesture was so motherly that Duncan wondered if they were related, or if the Keeper really did think of all under her protection as her children. "My magic has stayed the taint for the moment, _da'len_ , but it is temporary. Your body cannot fight it forever, not even with my magic. The Grey Warden offers you a way to survive."

Eris's brow furrowed, and she turned away from the Keeper's hand. "I will not be recruited out of pity." Duncan had to hold back a chuckle.

"My order does not deal in charity," he assured her. "Nor am I holding some potion ransom to recruit you. Becoming a Grey Warden is the only way to prevent the taint from killing you. We do not recruit to throw bodies at the darkspawn, we recruit those we believe have the skill our order needs to defeat them. From everything I have heard, I believe you have that skill."

"Long ago, our people agreed to aid the Wardens against a Blight, should that day arrive," Keeper Marethari added. "And I believe it has. The Blight is not something even our people can outrun. We must honour that agreement, _da'len_. Lend your talents to the Warden's cause, and in doing so you will protect your clan, and save your life."

"What of Tamlen's life?" Eris barked. "I can't leave, I have to find him!"

" _Ir abelas,_ Erisandril," the Keeper began, firm but gentle. "Merrill and I have discussed the nature of the artefact you encountered, and we do not believe Tamlen will be found. With darkspawn rising to the surface, we cannot stay here. Soon, I will move the clan north. We will sing the dirge for Tamlen tonight."

"No!" Eris's hand flew to her throat in shock, her eyes growing wet with unshed tears. "No, he is still alive, _Amelan! Ar sildeara ra!_ "

The Keeper spoke back to her in elven too quickly for Duncan to hear. He thought at first she was scolding the girl, but she pulled her quickly into a tight embrace. Duncan drew back to give them a moment as the Keeper held Eris, smoothing her hair and whispering to her. Duncan caught the end of her words as they slipped back into the King's Tongue. "…if this is what the Creators intend for you, _da'len_ , meet your destiny with your head held high. You will do us proud."

"I—I just—" Eris choked into the Keeper's shoulder. She stepped back eventually, failing to find her words. Her shoulders drooped and her fists unclenched as she turned to Duncan. "Fine. Fine."

Duncan released the breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding. It wasn't the most gracious acceptance he'd received, but he'd take it. The girl turned on her heel and stalked away into the trees, and Keeper Marethari seemed to deflate as she watched her go.

"The girl just needs some time. My apologies, Warden."

"No need," Duncan said lightly. "All that matters is that she is ready to leave in the morning."

"She will be," the Keeper said, her own eyes sparkling in the darkness with unshed tears. She took a deep breath in and gathered herself to her full, considerable height, her voice clear and commanding once more. "If you'll excuse me, Duncan, I have much to prepare."

And so Duncan retreated back to his tent, readying his possessions for the next day. Mostly, he was keeping out the elves' way. In the light of the lone lantern inside his tent, he penned a letter to send to Ostagar ahead of them. There were many couriers plying their trade along the roads to Ostagar with so many of Ferelden's armies camped there, he had no doubt they would find one along their journey. Duncan wrote briefly of the mirror he had destroyed, and of his new recruit; warning that he had no idea what her condition might be when they arrived. The little door of his lantern squeaked as he opened it to warm his stick of wax above the flame, and he securely stamped the letter with the seal of the Wardens.

He snuffed out the light and retreated to his bedroll, tossing and turning. He wasn't sure how long he lay there, somewhere between waking and dreaming, before he heard what must be all the clan gathering. Curious, he opened the flap in his tent just a little, and saw the elves gathered around the bonfire in a circle.

The flames were burning blue with magic and roaring high into the air. The Keeper stood before them, raising a gnarled white mage's staff to the sky. Merrill was at her side, along with hahren Yehvel and more of the clan's elders. One of the men spoke some words that were difficult for Duncan to catch, echoing strangely as they did around the forest, and the elves bowed their heads in silence.

Scanning the camp dimly lit under the moon, Duncan spotted Eris in the distance near the treeline. She was sitting on the halla pen and watching the proceedings. He couldn't see her expression from so far away, and he could only imagine what she must be thinking.

To his surprise, the elves broke their silence and began to sing as one. Though he did not know the words, their voices harmonising and echoing around the quiet forest in unison sent a chill up his spine. Duncan watched the fire rise unnaturally, sending azure sparks and embers flying up amongst the stars, and he wondered if the Templars knew just how much magic was hidden away inside the forest. He hoped, for the elves' sake, they did not.

Glancing back the halla pen, he saw that Eris was gone. Duncan closed the flap of his tent and forced himself into an uneasy sleep as the elves sang, grieving into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listened to Lament for Gandalf as I wrote that last scene, definitely didn’t tear up. Nope. 
> 
> Elven translations:
> 
> Ea atisha - calm down  
> Sathan, lasa em'an dirth - please, let us talk  
> Ma nuvenin, Amelan - As you say, Keeper  
> Ar sildeara ra - I feel it


	3. Absence Versus Thin Air

There were only two of them on the trail out of the forest. Four, if you included their mounts.

Always surrounded by her clan, Eris wasn’t sure if that had ever been true in her entire life until now. She’d been hunting before, by herself—or with Tamlen. The memory weighed in her mind like a stone hanging from her neck. Duncan was decent enough not to prod, which was maddening. She could do with a little prodding. Telling someone to mind their own business would have at least felt differently than trying not to remember Tamlen’s screams as the mirror had held him hostage.

She couldn’t dissuade herself of the notion that if she just ran back to the pond, she might find Tamlen waiting for her. Resting on the blanket, carefree, beautiful. Naked. She’d lay beside him and when the elk appeared, she’d grab him and pull him back to the grass where they belonged. It would be a good day. A better day.

There had truly been no sign of him. For hours, she’d searched the trail and the ruins themselves for any track that might have belonged to Tamlen. When the sun had gone down and the darkness made her tracking difficult, she wandered the surrounding area calling for him until her voice grew hoarse and her Fenarel had to all but drag her back to camp. She knew it was useless, in the end. It was like Tamlen had disappeared, swallowed up by the mirror and erased completely.

“Are you all right?” Duncan asked softly. Eris realised she’d been coughing, and she nodded. The gentle concern in his voice was irritating. Why did the shem she’d been saddled with have to be so damn decent? Slipping away would’ve felt less like desertion if she’d been dragged from her clan by a human boor.

One night, while they had made camp, she had excused herself to her small, sad tent to eat her stew in peace. Duncan, sensing that she needed time alone, said “of course” or something infuriatingly reasonable, and she’d stolen into the tent with her meal, gulping it down despite the scalding along her throat. She’d kept in the habit of wearing her weapons everywhere, which the Grey Warden had hardly protested, given the sword and dagger he kept at his waist at all times. She’d purposefully set up her tent slightly farther from the fire than normal. Duncan was alert, but he was only human. She’d wait until night fell before she left. Considered leaving a brief, apologetic note—

And had to stop herself from hacking up a lung as she doubled over her bowl, spitting out something that looked horribly like blood. She put her meal aside and lay back on her bedroll. Her eyes stung horribly, and for the first time in days she realised that the deep, abiding ache she was suffering might be something more than grief alone. Her limbs felt like they might snap in half if she tried to lift them.

“Eris.” Duncan’s voice was very quiet, near the flap of Eris’s tent. She froze, her hand inching towards her dagger. Which was absurd. She was dying of the taint or something, and Duncan was a veteran Warden who bore the weight of plate mail like it were cloth. “Come, and be very quiet.” His voice was urgent, in a way it hadn’t been in days. Eris forced her aching self to her feet and crawled out of the tent, surprised to find Duncan already had his sword drawn.

“What—”

“Darkspawn. Very close,” Duncan said. Eris’s eyebrows rose. She hadn’t heard anything, and she’d been hunting, killing, and hiding in the Brecilian since she’d been old enough to draw a bowstring. Eris’s hand went back to the dagger at her waist.

“How can you tell?” Eris hissed, not knowing how close ‘close’ was. Duncan smiled ruefully in the moonlight and gestured back towards the embers of their fire. Now that she was looking, she was sure he’d actually thrown more wood on it, trying to start it again.

“If they get close, stay near the fire. The darkspawn fear fire more than you or I,” Duncan said, his voice low.

“How do you rate their fear of half-dead elves?” Eris muttered. Duncan grinned again, though with no more mirth than the first time.

“No higher than their fear of old men. Be ready. They come.”

Now Eris did hear something—the deep, heavy breathing that she normally associated with a sick or dying animal, and the rough snapping of undergrowth she normally associated with bumbling idiots walking through the forest. And she smelled it, too—the stink of rotting, diseased flesh, and the breath of a carrion-eater on the wind. Duncan, contrary to the advice he’d given her, had advanced further towards the direction of the noise, putting the fire at his back. Eris would have been offended if the whispered snarling didn’t send a deep, trembling chill down her spine.

It occurred to her that her dagger would put her entirely too close to the source of that snarling, and she looked around her, scanning for an outcropping or any terrain she could use to safely set up with her bow. She did notice the tree directly behind her had deep, scored marks, probably from the bygone exploration of a young bear. She sheathed her dagger and scrambled up the side of the tree, alarmed at how sluggish and weak her limbs felt. But her fingers remembered how to find purchase on gnarled bark, and she was soon perched on a thick, heavy branch, half-hidden by leaves. Carefully, she unslung her bow and nocked an arrow, her gentle movements as soft as the creaking limbs of the tree in the wind.

This high up, she could see the darkspawn they’d been hearing, scrambling over a nearby mound, rusted, curved swords held in one hand. There were three of them, wearing rough, boiled leather armour that was half gone to rot in places, and one was slightly taller than the others. As she watched, her heart lurched, and she turned to look behind their fire, towards her Doshiel and Duncan’s horse, Merri. Both were steady beasts, but Merri was whinnying nervously and Doshiel was worrying the ground with a hoof, his grey antlered head twisting as he looked around. Eris frowned; what was he looking at?

She loosed the arrow before she’d fully processed what she’d seen—a flash of dark flesh hiding in the bushes that Doshiel had been staring at. The darkspawn squealed in pain and stumbled forward, clutching its dagger, before Eris’s next arrow split its skull between the eyes. Merri and Doshiel scattered for a second, pulling at their tethered leads to get away from the darkspawn’s corpse, as Eris heard the eruption of sword fighting back by the fire.

She turned to see Duncan, moving faster than she ever would have thought the old man could, artfully avoiding the clumsy strike of one smaller darkspawn even as he spun on one heel to drive the point of his dagger into the armpit of another, kicking its lifeless body to the ground with the dagger dug in its chest. He drew his sword and turned to face the two others, holding it in both hands and circling back towards the fire.

The larger darkspawn growled and charged, raising its jagged sword high above its head, and Duncan rolled to one side, ramming his shoulder into the smaller creature and knocking it prone. He swung his weapon in one clean arc, forcing the larger creature away. Eris, remembering that she had a bow in her hands, nocked another arrow and fired, striking the smaller of the two in its thigh. She cursed—she’d been aiming for its chest—but Duncan thrust his sword into the fallen creature’s throat and spun back towards the last, largest darkspawn, his weapon and armour stained with foul black blood.

The last darkspawn circled around Duncan as well, almost in a decent imitation of the elder swordsman’s footwork. Duncan’s eyes were sharp as his sword gleamed in the firelight, his expression grim and changeless. The darkspawn charged and drove its sword forward, thrusting rather than slashing clumsily as its companions had, and Duncan parried, the clanging of steel echoing through the forest. Eris had another arrow nocked, but Duncan and the darkspawn were so close to each other, and so far away from her, that she worried if the wind picked up her arrow might as soon strike Duncan.

He began stepping backwards, moving carefully towards the campfire, which by now had burned itself back to a bright, crackling flame. The darkspawn, despite Duncan’s earlier suggestion, followed him doggedly, holding its weapon in front of itself as Duncan did. Duncan switched to a single grip in his right hand and bent down as he approached the corpse of the first darkspawn he’d slain and jerked the dagger out of its armpit in a gout of blackened blood, flipping it into a reverse grip.

“Come, creature,” Duncan said, his calm voice dripping with contempt. The darkspawn roared and charged, abandoning its careful sword stance, and Duncan rolled to one side and dug the dagger’s point into the fire, flinging burning ash and ember into the darkspawn’s face. It screamed in outrage and dropped its sword, batting at its clothes, before Duncan’s sword drove up through its rib cage and into its heart. Moments later, its eye burst as Eris’s arrow pierced the back of its skull. The string of Eris’s bow thrummed as Duncan actually let out what sounded like a laugh, pulling his sword from the creature’s chest.

“That’s all of them,” Duncan called out, producing a cloth from his side and wiping his face clean of darkspawn blood. He frowned in disgust at it as he realised his rag was now beyond saving, and proceeded to wipe the blade of his sword before he sheathed it. He picked up his dagger from the fire, which was covered in muck and grime. “This might take a little more work, I’m afraid,” he said, half to himself.

Eris let herself down from the tree, and though she’d done it more times than she could count, she nearly tripped as she landed, and was overcome by another coughing fit. She hid her mouth with her hand and quickly wiped the blood on her leathers, not liking how dark the red looked in the moonlight.

“How… how did you know they were coming?” Eris asked, catching her breath. She realised that Duncan was looking at her, that damned concerned expression on his face, and tried to act as though she wasn’t busy dying.

“It is one of the... gifts we Grey Wardens receive,” Duncan said, though his lips twisted. “We can detect their presence. Though they can likewise detect ours. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Eris said, which would have been halfway convincing if she hadn’t had to cough into her fist a moment later. Duncan’s eyes were kind.

“We will get you the help you need soon. Or at the least, we will try.” Duncan returned to his own tent and pulled a glass vial from a pack. Eris blinked—she hadn’t taken him for a herbalist, and could hardly imagine what use an empty vial might serve now. “Can you come here?”

Eris did, eyeing the vial suspiciously. Duncan held it out to her. “You will need to collect some of their blood. Any of these here will do.”

“Why in Mythal’s name would I do that?” Eris blurted out. Duncan raised an eyebrow.

“This is an important Grey Warden ritual. It is older than you or I, and may be the key to saving your life. It is important you do this.” Eris took the vial dubiously, and started to unsheathe her own dagger before Duncan offered her his. “Use mine. No need to foul two perfectly good daggers in one night.” Duncan grinned, and despite herself, Eris did too. She took Duncan’s dagger and approached the larger creature, leaning down at its side. She cut a line in one arm and held the vial to the wound, watching as the black blood dripped into the glass.

“This is a hurlock,” Duncan said. He had knelt down beside her, moving so quietly that Eris hadn’t heard him approach. “Larger, stronger, and generally more deadly than their genlock cousins.”

“It seemed to know how to use a sword,” Eris muttered as the vial filled.

“Some do. Others may not. This group is likely a scouting party from the army at Ostagar. If we’re lucky, they are merely lost. But it is said that any darkspawn can find the horde, if it wishes to.” Eris looked at Duncan as she stoppered the vial. His dark eyes, illuminated by the flickering of the campfire, were staring far away. “It is an ill omen they made it this far.”

“They were smart enough to try and kill Doshiel and Merri,” Eris said, pointing back at their mounts. Duncan turned and let out a short huff of surprise as he saw the darkspawn corpse laying next to the creatures.

“Then thank the Maker for your vigilance,” Duncan muttered, bowing his head respectfully. “If they would think to take away our means of escape... hmm.” Duncan sounded lost in thought, and Eris found herself asking:

“’Hmm’ what?”

Duncan blinked rapidly and looked at her, as though remembering she was there. He let out a long, deep sigh.

“A group of four darkspawn should not be that intelligent. Not unless they are being led by an archdemon.” That word sent a chill down Eris’s spine. She hadn’t taken Duncan’s concerns about a Blight entirely seriously before, but seeing the darkspawn blood glinting black in the night, and the corpse of their would-be horse assassin, was convincing in a way that she couldn’t entirely dismiss. Duncan shook his head. “Nonetheless. I must thank you. You have acquitted yourself remarkably well in an ambush, especially given your condition. I know this must seem backhanded praise, but I am sure you will make an outstanding Warden.”

Eris didn’t entirely know what to make of that. She hadn’t seriously thought about actually becoming a Grey Warden before—her only concern had been finding Tamlen. Until Duncan had come to her tent, she had been dead set on fleeing in the night to try and find him. Now that thought seemed so shameful she was embarrassed to have considered it. What had she been planning to do, anyway? Return to her clan, tell them she simply didn’t _feel_ like joining the Wardens? Wander around looking for Tamlen until her sickness overcame her, and she died in a ditch somewhere? No, the only path for her was the one she was now on, even if she had no idea where it would lead her. Perhaps if she survived the battle against the darkspawn the Grey Wardens would no longer have need of her, and she could journey back to the forest to find her clan.

After they moved the darkspawn bodies away from camp, Duncan bade her goodnight and Eris returned to the cool earth in her tent. As a fitful sleep crept upon her, she wondered where Tamlen was. Wondered if he would have a friend to help him should the darkspawn come, growling in the night.

* * *

The rest of their journey to Ostagar was less eventful, which was a mercy, as Eris’s condition only worsened as they emerged from the forest and found the road. She clung to Doshiel’s mane as they traveled, no longer keeping track of the road and trusting Duncan to lead them to the ruined fortress. Any dissatisfaction she had once had with the human’s companionship had evaporated once she had seen him facing those darkspawn in the darkness.

Along their way, they happened upon a courier moving more quickly than they could to Ostagar, who had charged Duncan what Eris thought was a robber’s price to deliver a message to the Wardens’ camp. Eris had been too ill to say anything, and Duncan seemed well used to such treatment by the common folk. Eris was increasingly getting the impression that most shemlen lacked the respect for the Grey Wardens that her own people had taught her.

They found a tavern to sleep in for a night, a tiny building in a backwater village along their way. Duncan paid their fee for a room as Eris had no money to her name, and suddenly she felt very unprepared to be in the outside world. Eris ignored the stares the humans gave her as she dragged herself to the bed dressed with scratchy hay and rough linen. She slept fitfully, waking thirsty and in a cold sweat many times throughout the night. When Duncan gently roused her in the morning, it took all her strength to drag herself out of bed. Her limbs were shaking with the effort, and every movement brought with it an ache that went deep as her bones. Duncan looked alarmed as he helped her up, and announced they would need to reach Ostagar that day.

Eris slipped in and out of consciousness as she rode on top of Doshiel, trusting him to follow in Duncan’s wake. She pulled her cloak tight around her and threw her hood over her head, shivering so hard that her body hurt as she did. Eris blinked up against the sunlight and saw the ruined towers at Ostagar in the distance. A wave of weakness so strong that she swayed in her saddle hit her, and she barely had time to choke out Duncan’s name before she felt herself slipping off her mount.

As she fell, some part of her consciousness called out for her to brace her arms against her fall, but her limbs simply couldn’t cooperate in time. She slammed into the dirt with her shoulder, her head following just after. She felt her brow split open and terrible, pulsing pain wrack her body, though somehow it all felt very far away.

Vaguely she felt Duncan gather her up, felt him dab at her brow with a cloth, and tip some water down her throat. He was speaking to her, but Eris couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. Her insomnia from the previous night was gone, now. She felt like she could slip into a deep, dreamless sleep, if the Warden would only let her...

Instead, he picked her up in his arms and managed to heft her up into a sitting position on Merri’s handsome, comfortable saddle. Duncan positioned himself behind her in the saddle, reaching his arms out on either side of her to grip Merri’s reins and stop her from slipping. Eris felt Duncan spur Merri into a canter, and though each jostle of the horse made her head spin, she managed to croak out “Doshiel...”

“I’ve got his lead, don’t worry,” Duncan said. If he continued speaking after that, Eris didn’t hear. The back of her head lolled awkwardly against Duncan’s breastplate as they rode, and Eris saw no more.

* * *

When she awoke, Eris was in a tent again, though much larger and warmer than her own. The deep red material dimmed the sunlight from outside, though it did little to muffle the noise. So much noise; more than Eris thought she’d heard in her whole life. Buzzing chatter, barking dogs, singing, metal against metal, orders being shouted, and the telltale low _whoosh_ of magic thrumming in the air.

Ostagar.

Eris lay still in her cot, listening to it all. She felt... better. Not good, but better. Her limbs still felt weak and her whole body vaguely ached, but her chill was gone and she was very much still alive.

“Ah, you’re awake,” a voice from the corner of the tent said. Eris jolted in the cot, feeling instinctively for her weapons, though she found none. She relaxed when she saw an old human woman rising from a chair, a kindly expression on her face as she made her way to Eris.

“It took a lot of work to break your fever, young lady,” the woman said with a tired smile, “But we finally pulled you through.”

“Who are you?” Eris asked. Her lips were dry and her throat cracked as she spoke. The woman knowingly handed her a mug of cool water from a table, and Eris drank deeply.

“I am Wynne, a mage of the Circle,” she said. “Though at the moment, I am your healer.”

“Why?”

The woman seemed startled by the question. “What do you mean, ‘why’? You are a Warden, or soon will be. Your life is worth saving.”

Eris frowned into the empty mug. “Thank you, Wynne.”

“You can thank me by helping us all kill these darkspawn,” Wynne said with a cock of her brow, though her smile was kind. “Wait here and rest, I will let the Warden-Commander know you are awake.”

Eris lifted herself out of the cot, and found her hunting leathers folded neatly at the foot of her bed. She pulled them on and looked around the tent. She found her weapons next to the chair where Wynne had sat, and was grateful for the familiar weight of the bow at her back and her dagger and quiver at each hip.

When Wynne returned, it was with a different human Eris didn’t recognise. Wynne tutted, seeing Eris standing and fully dressed. “One day I’ll tell a sick soldier to rest and they will listen. One day.” She looked pointedly at the tall young man who’d accompanied her, and he chuckled.

“Thank you for your help, Wynne,” he said.

Wynne patted the man on his armored shoulder. “Just get her through the Joining quickly. I will tell the mages we can begin the initial preparations for you.”

Eris watched her leave, her royal blue robes whipping out of sight as she let the tent flap fall closed behind her. The young man seemed nervous for a moment, but seemed to recover quickly and gave Eris a crooked smile. “Mages, huh?” He said, wiggling his brows. Eris blinked, and the man held his arms out defensively. “That is, uh, unless you are one.”

“I’m an archer,” Eris said, dully gesturing at the bow slung over her back.

“Yes! I see that,” the man said, clearing his throat. “Let’s start again. My name is Alistair. I’m the junior member of the order, so that means I’m in charge of... well, orientation, I suppose.”

Eris eyed the griffon emblazoned on his breastplate and nodded. “I’m Eris.”

“Yes, Duncan sent word,” Alistair said. “Glad to see you’re still alive. Not many people last that long with the taint.”

Eris shut her eyes tightly for a moment, telling herself Alistair couldn’t know about Tamlen. “I’ve had help,” she said.

“Even so,” Alistair said cheerfully. He rocked on his heels and continued chatting. “It’ll be good to have another woman in the Wardens. There aren’t many of you in our order at the moment.”

“Why is that?”

“I-well, I don’t rightly know,” Alistair deflated a little. “There aren’t many of us at all, to tell you the truth.”

“What about elves?”

“A few. Just the one recruit though, besides you. But he’s from the Circle, not...”

“Dalish.”

Alistair nodded. “Yes, exactly. Anyway, are you hungry?”

It was only when Alistair asked her that Eris realised she was hungry, more than she had been in days. “Starving, actually.”

“They’ve got some soup going outside,” Alistair said, pointing his thumb back at the entrance of the tent. “Nothing too fancy, but it’ll fill you up at least. And we can introduce you to the other recruits.”

“There are others?”

“Yes, four of them. We’re in the recruit camp. The rest of the Wardens are camped in the valley, but it’s not so bad—come on, see for yourself.”

Alistair led the way out of the tent, and Eris emerged to find herself in the middle of a vast soldier’s camp nestled in Ostagar’s ruins. Eris tried very hard to stop her eyes from going wide as she scanned a horizon that seemed to be made of the spiky tops of tents. She’d been raised in camps her whole life—but nothing like this. This camp was a city unto itself, and her eyes kept catching on what felt like absurd details; wooden stakes driven into pens for dogs, tents erected that seemed half-permanent, and more cookfires and forges than she had ever seen in one place.

And elves. More elves than she’d ever seen outside her home—but these elves kept their heads bowed and shoulders stooped and were constantly running, either to somewhere or from something and usually hot on the heels of some shem’s barking. It made her feel sick. Searching for something familiar, her eyes fell on a stable—again, more permanent a fixture than Eris would have thought was practical for a camp—and saw Doshiel next to Duncan’s horse. She felt some of the tension in her shoulders melt at the sight, and seeing him comfortable and safe even in this unfamiliar environment made her feel some of the same.

“They’re over this way,” Alistair was saying. Eris realised she’d subconsciously been following, though she hadn’t heard anything else he’d said. She hoped it wasn’t important.

Alistair led her to a small clearing apart from the main camp where a cluster of tents were dwelling in the shelter of crumbled pillars and a half-ruined wall. A pot was suspended over a pile of glowing embers that were occasionally sparking into flame. Eris could smell the soup, and it smelled—well, like wet meat, really. But it might as well have been honey-braised deer tenderloin for all the growling her stomach did in anticipation.

“Let’s get you some food,” Alistair said, grabbing a bowl that did not look entirely clean and ladling a generous portion of brown goop into it. He handed the bowl and a spoon from a metal dish next to the fire to her, grinning genially. She tried not to think of all the shemlen who had eaten from the rather grimy utensil before her.

“Thanks,” she said, sounding remarkably convincing. She shovelled a spoonful into her mouth and didn’t have to fake her gratitude, though—her empty stomach made it taste delicious.

The others must have heard their commotion, because soon a nearby tent flap was being pulled open and what looked like a very sleepy collection of would-be Wardens emerged.

“They had the night watch,” Alistair grinned. He jerked his chin forward at one of them as though in greeting. “Exciting, fulfilling your duties as men and women trusted to the fabled Grey Wardens?”

“There were a lot of trees. None seem to be in open rebellion,” one of them said dryly, ruffling the back of his hair. The man’s eyes lit up when he saw Eris and he walked forward, outstretching a hand. “Name’s Daveth. You the next lucky asshole Duncan conned into joining?” But the grin in his eyes betrayed his fondness for the old man.

The next she saw was a slim, dark-skinned elf wearing a robe, a shock of black hair messily swept to one side of his head. He grinned wearily as he emerged and rubbed his eyes; apparently much less used to sleeping in the day than this Daveth was. He didn’t say anything but there was a brief nod that Eris thought might have been some gesture of kinship, or something.

“That’s Alim. Forgive him, he’s a Circle Mage, and I’m not sure he’s seen this many trees all at once,” Alistair said, as he busied himself with getting his own bowl of soup. Alim rolled his eyes.

“That was almost as tasteless as your cooking. Nice to meet you,” Alim said, nodding towards Eris again.

“Likewise,” Eris said, a little lamely. After the elf two more of the Warden recruits emerged, one a tall, slightly dumpy-looking human with an unremarkable face but rather expensive armour, and the other a handsome-faced dwarf who was eating slices of apple off of a very rich knife. The dwarf, a woman, raised an eyebrow at Eris, but said nothing. The human nodded to her, then to Alistair.

“This is the new recruit, then?” Alistair’s non-response was apparently sufficient, as the armoured man turned back to Eris, who was entirely unprepared for this assault of… what she assumed were supposed to be manners. “Ser Jory of Highever, at your service.” He didn’t shake her hand like Daveth had, but rather sort of just … stood there expectantly. Eris had the feeling she was supposed to react, but had no idea what to say.

“Uh, pleasure,” Eris said, returning to her soup. As she did the dwarf woman elbowed Jory out of the way—Eris decided she liked her—and extended a hand.

“Sereda Aeducan. Formerly of Orzammar. Now of wherever the bleeding piss this is,” the woman grunted, shaking Eris’s hand. “If you want an apple there’s more in the tent. Got a whole crate of them. Where’d we get them again?” Sereda looked over her shoulder at Alistair, who shrugged.

“I don’t know. Who cares about apples?”

“People who didn’t grow up with trees,” Sereda snorted, though she grinned as well. “What are we waiting for, the darkspawn to shove their swords up our arses?”

“That’s when we know we’ll have them,” Alim said dully, staring at the stew with something resembling malice. “When they’re clapped between our cheeks. They’ll be trapped.”

“That’s disgusting,” Jory said, as everyone else snorted their laughter. Even Eris couldn’t help but grinning into her soup.

“That’s the idea. Shock-and-awe. Don’t you know anything about warfare?” Alim asked. He had a knack for sounding preternaturally bored about everything.

“I am a _knight_ —”

“Ah, that explains it. Knights don’t have asscheeks, everyone knows that,” Alim insisted seriously. “It’s why you’re all such lovely company. You and the Templars both. Not an asscheek between the lot of you. Present company excluded, of course.” Alim grinned at Alistair, who far from reprimanding the mage seemed to be having trouble not erupting into laughter, which Sereda and Daveth had already done with relish.

Jory’s spluttering was interrupted as soft footfalls broke the edge of the camp; Eris turned and saw Duncan walking towards them, looking more weary than when she’d seen him last, though his armour was cleaner. A gentle smile curved at his lips, and all the assembled recruits—even Alim—seemed to stand a little straighter for his presence. Eris found herself following suit.

“I’m glad to see you’ve gotten to know one another,” Duncan said, looking at them each in turn. “Eris, how are you feeling? Wynne said you had recovered for the moment.”

“More or less,” Eris said, hiding the ache that she still felt in her ribs. She didn’t want to betray any weakness in a clearing full of shemlen, a dwarf, and a strange city elf. Circle elf. Whatever. She wasn’t sure there was much difference.

“Good. Because the time for idleness and tree-watching is nearing its end,” Duncan said, with a perhaps-too knowing look at Daveth. Eris wondered just how sharp the old man’s hearing was; his senses had certainly seemed supernatural when he’d dispatched those darkspawn. “There’s been a small scouting party that’s gone missing in the Korcari Wilds. King Cailan and his General don’t seem to think much of it, but I mislike reports of missing men while the woods are choked with darkspawn. Alistair,” Duncan said, addressing Eris’s escort directly now. Alistair perked up as Duncan looked at him. “The time has come to test your abilities. I have business with the other Wardens and the King which cannot be avoided, but I will not simply leave those men to their fate. I would have you take our recruits into the wilds to find the lost soldiers, or what signs you may come across.”

“Why us?” Daveth yelped, looking more than a little alarmed. “Aren’t we just trainees?”

“Trainees with a Grey Warden leading you,” Duncan said firmly, gesturing to Alistair, who managed to mostly hide his blush. “Who better to send into the Wilds than someone who can detect the darkspawn before they come upon you? There is little chance you will trip upon the horde, Daveth. Besides,” Duncan said, as he was already turning to leave, “We still need more blood for the Joining. Make sure they collect what they can, Alistair.”

As Duncan left, Eris was sure that she saw a shadow pass over Alistair’s face.


	4. Gamut of the Dark

If someone had asked Alistair how he would handle one of his first commands as a Grey Warden, he would not have expected to say that he was leading two elves, a knight, a thief, and a dwarven princess into a forest. That sounded like the beginning of a bad joke, absent the requisite tavern.

A thin mist seemed to cling to the air no matter the weather, and the mossy smell of damp and ruin hung about them like a noose around the neck. The trees were sparse, which should have made their expedition easy, but in the muck and reeds it was hard to find any kind of path or track, and more than once they had to take the long way around a bog to avoid filling their boots with swamp water.

“Are we even following the _beginnings_ of a trail?” Alim asked, in such a way that Alistair could practically hear the wrinkle in his nose. Alistair sighed.

“This is where the scouting party was last seen,” Alistair insisted, although if he were entirely honest he was working on vague descriptions and half-baked guesses. “I’m assuming they’re not amphibious. If we follow the woodland, we’ll find some sign, eventually.”

“Look on some of those guards, they’d run piss-tilt through a bog if there was a darkspawn coming after them,” Sereda drawled. Alistair suspected she was as pleased by the swamp as Alim was, but she at least hid it better. Daveth had made no shortage of complaints until Eris had rolled her eyes, which had the singular effect of shutting him up. No one wanted to be shown up by an elf, Alistair supposed. He filed the information away for later reference. Best to know where his fellow Wardens’ biases lay.

_If they become Wardens_. Alistair knew what Duncan expected of them, he just wasn’t sure that the rest of them did. It seemed almost cruel, but Alistair supposed it was necessary. He supposed cruelty always wound up being necessary in war, one way or another.

“Hang on. There’s a trail here.” This from Eris. Alistair turned, surprised, and then not so surprised. She was a literal woodland elf. Of course she could find a trail. He should have used that earlier.

“Really? How can you tell?” Daveth asked. Alistair had been about to ask the same thing himself.

“The water’s filled over, but the reeds are bent here. Look.” Eris knelt down over a patch of swamp and pressed her hand into the reeds, gently. “There’s a bootprint beneath the water. It’s been nearly washed away, but I’d say it’s fresh. Probably.”

“ _Probably_?” Alim groaned.

“Tracking is rarely an exact art,” Eris muttered. “A lot of sh— ” Eris stopped herself. “If you think I can tell you the man this print belongs to had eggs for breakfast and was running downwind, that’s not how this works.”

“Well, something is better than nothing. Thank you, Eris,” Alistair said, striding over by her in such a way that he hoped wouldn’t trample any other tracks. “Can you tell where they were going?” Alistair bent down and thought he could see the depression in the reeds, but it wasn’t an easy thing to pick out among the countless other brush surrounding them. He would’ve walked right over it, if he had seen it at all.

“Maybe. Towards the treeline.”

“Are there darkspawn in that direction?” Jory asked, a little too quickly. “Can you tell?” Alistair hid his frown a little too late.

“It’s not a compass, you know. More like that feeling you get when someone’s watching you. But there are none nearby, I’m sure. Not unless they’re being unusually sneaky.” Alistair had been trying to joke, but Eris snorted.

“Darkspawn aren’t usually that subtle, don’t you think?”

“You’ve fought them, then?” Sereda said, sounding pleased. Sharp, that one. Blunt, but sharp. Like a club with a little point on it. “At least you’re not all grub-pickers.”

“ _What_ ,” Alim said, “Is a grub-picker?”

Sereda grinned. “A kid who eats the nasty shit growin’ on stone. You know. Grub-picker.”

“Remind me to never go to Orzammar,” Alim said lightly.

“Erm, well … yes.” In Alistair’s experience the best way to break up an awkward conversation was with an awkward pause. Never failed. “Eris, can you pick up the trail?”

“Yes. As much as there is, anyway.”

Alistair fell into step behind Eris, and the others behind him. He felt an almost immediate sense of relief, and then guilt. He shouldn’t be relieved. Duncan had trusted him to command, rather than to follow.

She led them to the trees, and for the better part of an hour the six of them made their way through foliage that grew ever denser and more difficult to navigate. Jory and Alistair himself were a little awkward in their bulk and armour, but they stopped only for Eris to inspect the trail, and once briefly for Daveth to pull his foot free of some mud and roots that caught his boot.

“You know,” he said, eyeing the thick mud caked on his leather boot, “It’s not just darkspawn we have to worry about in here.”

“Enlighten us Daveth,” Alim sighed, swatting away a fly buzzing round his face. “I’m sure you were going to, anyway.”

“I grew up around these parts, before I figured Denerim had more purses,” Daveth said seriously. “I reckon these wilds are the most dangerous place in Ferelden. Wolves, snakes, giant swamp crabs, Chasind savages, witches…”

Sereda wrinkled her nose. “Giant swamp crabs?”

“…are _not_ a real thing,” Jory said stiffly from the back of the group.

“Yes they are!” Daveth said, wheeling on Jory. “My da’s friend’s brother was killed by one, crushed him between pincers bigger than boulders! You can’t just whack ‘em with an axe either; their skin’s tougher than plate mail. I’m just saying, there’s a thousand ways to die in these woods, and our friend here can only sense one of them coming.”

“We’ll be fine if we’re careful, Daveth,” Alistair said, trying hard to keep his voice even.

“Most you have to look out for in the city is a guard or another cutpurse or stepping in someone’s shit,” Daveth grumbled.

Alim huffed a disbelieving breath. “Literally, or figuratively?”

“Both.”

“Quiet,” Alistair said, his voice holding more authority than he thought it would. Something was buzzing at his senses, something at once horribly familiar and spine-chillingly alien.

Eris stopped immediately and rounded on him. “Darkspawn?” She breathed.

“Yes.”

Alistair heard the others shuffle behind him. “You’re sure?” Daveth squeaked, and Sereda nudged him irritably.

“Can you tell how many?” Eris asked. Alistair shut his eyes in concentration.

“Not exactly… maybe… four? Five? I can’t be certain,” Alistair admitted, “But few enough that we can manage them.”

“Oh, Maker…” Daveth breathed, and he unsheathed his axe, gripping it until his knuckles turned white. Jory and Sereda did the same with their weapons, and Alim was clearly no longer carrying his staff as a walking stick. By the time Alistair had drawn his sword and readied his shield, he saw Eris had nocked an arrow, holding it loose and pointed at the ground.

She took a few steps back, standing next to Alistair. “If you lead us to them, perhaps we could get the jump on them.”

“Not a bad idea,” Alistair agreed, and he took the lead again.

It was still something he was getting used to; navigating the new sense he had for darkspawn. Feeling their presence was at once nebulous and painfully real, clawing at the back of his mind. He took a deep breath and allowed the feeling to draw him in and pull him closer to the creatures.With tension heavy in the air around them, Eris broke the silence.

“This is the same direction as the tracks,” she said quietly, still holding her bow at the ready. “Perhaps the scouts fought with the darkspawn.”

“Don’t think they’d have been prepared for it,” Sereda grunted.

Alistair was about to continue forward when he noticed a confused look on Eris’s face. She was scanning the trees to their left, but when Alistair glanced at where she was looking, he saw nothing.

He raised a questioning brow at her, not wanting to alarm the others, but she shook her head. “Just an animal,” she whispered, but her frown hadn’t altogether faded.

It took them another ten minutes of quiet, careful hiking to finally hear the darkspawn ahead. There were no sounds of fighting; only the unnatural, guttural noises the wretched things couldn’t help but make.

Alistair felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Eris at his side. She made some sort of gesture ahead, indicating that she would go first. He nodded and put up a hand to let the others know. He saw Alim take a deep breath to ready himself, while Daveth nervously licked his lips and adjusted his grip on his axe. Jory and Sereda both stood ready, cool with the detachment of a practiced warrior.

Alistair watched Eris creep forward, each footstep light and considered. She avoided a puddle and ducked carefully under a low, leafy branch. When she came to a thick, gnarled tree, she drew herself against its bark like she belonged there, and Alistair appreciated for the first time the strange brown and green designs on her hunting leathers. Carefully, she peeked her head around the corner of the tree.

Alistair felt himself and the group hold their breath, but nothing about the darkspawn noises changed when Eris craned her head to look. Tension mounted as they watched her watch them, but none of them dared speak.

She turned back finally, seemed thoughtful for a moment, and then held up her hand to show five fingers. She then pointed slowly and meaningfully at her bow, and held up two fingers. Then at Alistair’s sword—two fingers again. Then finally at Alim, one finger.

Alistair turned toward the others. As quietly as he could manage while still making himself heard, he whispered, “I’ll take the mage.”

He looked ahead at Eris and she nodded, nocking her arrow again and pulling her bow string tight, ready to fire. He hugged his shield to his chest and raised his sword to signal the others, then set off at a run as he let it fall.

He heard the others charge behind him, and the sharp twang of Eris’s first arrow firing, and then they were in battle.

Alistair scanned the clearing quickly. The two archers were unprepared; only one of them was even holding its bow, and the other was digging at something in the ground, completely unaware. The ones with swords were further away from the group, and he could ignore them for the moment. It was the genlock emissary holding what could have been an unassuming stick of rotted wood that Alistair charged straight for.

The creature raised its staff and hissed at him, and Alistair felt the beginnings of a spell set the air around his skin on fire before an arrow pierced the genlock’s arm, interrupting its channel. Alistair used the opportunity to draw on his Templar training. Knowing that Alim was far behind him, he pushed out with senses he didn’t know he had a few short years ago. He could feel the tiny gaps in the Veil around the emissary; feel the creature pulling the power of the Fade through them and into its staff, and with a gesture of his shield-hand, the gaps closed abruptly.

The genlock screeched in rage, baring its too-wide mouth to reveal pointed yellow teeth, and Alistair smashed it to the ground with his shield and drove the point of his sword into its throat.

He turned, taking stock of the changed scene. An arrow appeared in the chest of one of the darkspawn archers, while the other lay twitching and sizzling slightly on the ground—Alistair saw Alim grinning wickedly with his staff held aloft and crackling. Sereda swung her greatsword in a wide, practiced arc, and it sliced with a terrible crunch through half the head of the genlock she’d been sparring with. Jory was expertly parrying the blows of a hurlock… until Daveth appeared behind the creature, swung his axe into the back of its knee, and then cleanly into its neck as it fell. He gave its corpse a disgusted kick for good measure.

Alistair nearly laughed in relief at how well their first encounter with darkspawn had gone, but he quickly turned it into a cough. “We’re clear,” he announced, as he felt the presence of the taint ebb away as the twitching darkspawn archer finally succumbed.

Eris joined them from her spot in the trees, Alim shook his hands free of ambient magic, Sereda let out a victorious whoop, and Jory glared at Daveth.

“I had it, you know.”

“Sure, but I finished it,” Daveth said with a wolfish grin, “Don’t need to teach it footwork before you kill it, Ser Knight.” Daveth gave Jory a mock bow. He seemed a lot more at ease now that he had finally faced the darkspawn and realised that while they were horrifying, they were also quite killable. Alistair had felt something similar himself when he’d joined.

Alistair broke up the impending argument before it could start. “Right!” He said sharply, and opened up the padded leather pouch that Duncan had given him at his belt. “I’ve got vials here; if you haven’t collected darkspawn blood with Duncan yet, come get one and fill it up.”

Sereda and Eris hung back while the rest approached him. Jory looked uncertain as he took the heavy glass vial from Alistair’s hand. “What are we doing with the blood of these creatures anyway?”

“It’s an important part of the Joining,” Alistair said, doing what he thought was a pretty good job of masking his concerns. “Don’t worry about it for now.”

“Does it matter which one?” Alim asked, gesturing vaguely at the darkspawn corpses littering the forest ground.

“Nope!” Alistair said cheerfully. “Take your pick. I chose the one with the prettiest smile, myself.”

Jory and Daveth both went for the hurlock they’d fought, before Daveth thought better of it at the knight’s glare and loped away to the genlock whose head Sereda had nearly cut clean in half.

Alim patted the pockets of his robe. “Oh, uh… Sereda, dear, if you would…?” He held out his hand hopefully at the dwarf.

Sereda drew the knife at her hip, handing it to him with a sigh. “Guess they haven’t invented the spell that summons a knife yet, huh?”

“I wouldn’t be a mage worthy of the Wardens if I needed one—present purposes excluded,” Alim said, and he slinked over to the genlock he’d slain. He looked over the darkspawn’s body quickly before finding a gap in its armour at the shoulder and digging the tip of the blade into it, making a small puncture that leaked drops of blood. He watched with distaste as he pressed the vial to the cut and collected the thick, black blood.

Sereda made a face as she accepted her knife back from Alim, and flicked it free of the blood on its tip. “Not eating apples with this thing again,” she muttered. “What now?”

Alistair realised the group were looking at him expectantly, and he cleared his throat. “Well, we still haven’t seen any sign of the scouting band.”

“Actually…” Eris said, walking past them and near the spot one of the darkspawn archers had been digging. “Give me a moment.”

She knelt on the ground, touching the dirt, and looked around past the clearing where the grass began growing near the trees again. “Alistair,” she said slowly. “Do… do darkspawn _do_ anything with their fallen foes?”

“Uh,” Alistair stammered, not sure if he wanted to have the _yes, darkspawn have this charming habit of just up and eating people sometimes_ conversation yet. “They’ll sometimes carry their bodies off, yes.”

“You think the scouts fought the darkspawn here?” Sereda asked.

“No…” Eris said, trailing off in thought as she looked around some more. “No, they didn’t fight here, but… I think there were more darkspawn that passed through this way. And… it looks like they were dragging something.”

Alistair followed where she’d pointed and saw that the grass near the edge of the clearing was disturbed. Squinting, he thought he could make out some bootprints that were half-covered in fresh dirt that he knew their group hadn’t kicked up in the skirmish.

Sereda whistled appreciatively. “Nice work, Dalish,” she said. Eris looked momentarily unsure about the nickname before Alistair saw her shoot Sereda a small smile.

“So…” Alim cleared his throat, and cocked his head in the direction the prints led. “That way, then? Or back with our report?”

Eris stood up, dusted off her hands, and joined the group in waiting for Alistair’s order. He was distracted, though. Something was itching at the edge of his senses.

“What is it?” Daveth asked, shifting his feet and obviously eager to get back to the safety of the army camp. Alistair held up a hand for silence, pinching the bridge of his nose and trying to grasp on to the fleeting feeling pushing at his mind.

“It’s… it’s darkspawn,” he said eventually, “More of them.”

“How many more?” Jory demanded, and Alistair ignored him.

He felt a sensation not unlike a many-legged insect creeping up his spine, though much, much stronger than before. “A lot more,” he said finally. The feeling of pitch eyes watching him from murky shadows felt suddenly unbearable, and he did his best to hide the alarm in his voice from the group as he looked back up at them.

“That way. Go.” No one moved. “ _Now_.”

All at once, they broke into a frantic run.

* * *

The sun had all but dipped below the horizon when their group finally found their way back to the army camp, exhausted and dirty and terrified.

Thanks to Alistair’s guidance, they hadn’t seen a single darkspawn after their first fight, but for hours they’d run and hid and navigated the endless swampy forest, trying to circle back and avoid what Alistair realised with a terror he felt down to his bones was the bulk of the darkspawn horde.

At one point, when they were catching their breath and their bearings in the shadow of a gigantic, uprooted tree while darkspawn pricked at Alistair’s senses all around them, Jory had marched right up to Alistair and given him an accusatory shove.

“Is this a joke?” He demanded furiously as Daveth and Sereda pulled him back. “Some Warden hazing ritual? You plan to scare us half to death, get us lost in this forest before we join?”

Alistair had been too stunned to be angry. “I sense hundreds of them, Jory,” he said breathlessly. “Maybe thousands.”

“We’ve seen no darkspawn but those we felled,” Jory had said as he wrenched his arms away from Daveth and Sereda, but he didn’t rush at Alistair again, and they were soon able to circle around and, thanks to Eris’s sense of direction in the maze of the overgrown forest, found a trail that would lead them back to the camp.

They’d been following the trail faithfully and Alistair had announced he’d sensed no darkspawn for a time, when Eris suddenly whipped around. The others, still on guard, followed her movement, and spotted a pair of yellow eyes watching them from between the trees. They belonged to a grey wolf, which blinked slowly at them before disappearing into the shadows.

“It’s been following us for some time,” Eris told them, watching the spot where it had vanished with a puzzled expression on her tattooed face. Jory made to draw his blade, but Eris held out a hand. “It’s alone. Maybe trying to avoid the darkspawn, just as we were.”

“Don’t care about no Maker-damned wolf,” Daveth said, hugging his arms to his chest and shivering. “Can we just get out of these wilds already?”

“Exceptional wolf,” Alim opined, “If the Maker himself went to the trouble of damning it.”

The guards at the gate welcomed them back, and Alistair led their group to the Warden’s recruit camp. Duncan, to Alistair’s great relief, was awaiting them by a roaring fire.

“Alistair,” he called as they approached, relief stretched across his face. “I was ready to send out a search party for the search party. You met trouble in the wilds?”

“The horde,” Alistair said in an undertone as he met Duncan. “We just narrowly avoided it. It’s coming this way, Duncan.”

A grave shadow swept over Duncan’s warm features. “Come,” he said, taking Alistair by the elbow, “We must bring this news to the king. Can you tell us where they were on a map?”

Alistair shook his head, then looked over his shoulder. “Eris can, I’m sure,” he said, half to Duncan and half to her. She nodded, wide-eyed, and readjusted her grip on her bow strap before joining them.

“The rest of you,” Duncan said, turning to address the group, “Catch your breath, and prepare yourselves for the Joining Ritual. It takes place tonight.”

Alistair saw Wynne, who’d been spending time at the Warden camp, approach the remaining four recruits and collect the vials of darkspawn blood they carried. He caught the serious nod that she gave Duncan before he led Alistair and Eris through the camp.

King Cailan’s tent wasn’t far from the Warden camp: Alistair wondered if the King had it placed there on purpose, given his fondness for their order. He hoped that would make their announcement about the appearance of the horde easier to swallow.

To Alistair’s surprise and great relief, it wasn’t the grand yellow and red tent of the king that Duncan led them to, but the more modest, muted blue tent of General Loghain Mac Tir. It made sense—everyone with the barest bit of brain for politics knew that it was Loghain they were looking to if they wished to win the war. King Cailan had wandered the army camp in his gleaming golden armour, often taking trips to the main Warden camp to drink with them, even ambling around to the recruits to meet them as Duncan had dropped them off—Alistair found himself a very important task to do whenever the king swaggered their way—but they had too seldom seen the king hole up in the General’s tent with the other commanders to talk strategy.

He was there this time, though, reclining in a chair looking ever the bored schoolboy as Loghain pored over various reports. Duncan had exchanged only a few words with Loghain’s guard before they were permitted to pass, and if Alistair hadn’t been so preoccupied with what he’d felt in the Wilds his chest would have swelled with pride at how important the Grey Wardens were to this battle.

Loghain barely acknowledged their entrance, but the King’s eyes lit up when he saw Duncan. Cailan spread his arms wide in greeting. “Ho there, Duncan!” He said happily, and his eyes grazed past Alistair and onto Eris, who he looked at a little too appreciatively. “This is your newest recruit, is it?”

“Yes, your Majesty,” Duncan said quickly, “You must forgive me, there is no time for introductions. I bring urgent news from the wilds.”

That got Loghain to look up from his report. A frown sat on his face as comfortably as a king in a chair. “These two are from the group you sent there?” He glanced at Alistair and Eris with cold grey eyes. 

“Yes,” Duncan nodded, “Alistair sensed the horde within the wilds, Teyrn Loghain.”

“How much of it?” Loghain snapped. No, not snapped. There was an edge in his voice, but it wasn’t meant for Duncan, Alistair didn’t think. From the way Loghain’s eyes avoided the King, Alistair thought it was half-meant for Cailan.

“All of it, my Lord,” Alistair said, quickly bowing his head deferentially. Loghain glanced towards Duncan.

“I trust Alistair’s word, my Lord. If he sensed the horde, it is here. It is coming.”

Loghain finally looked back at Cailan, as the King’s fingers thrummed impatiently against the arm of his chair, golden rings glittering in flickering candlelight.

“You’re certain?” The young King sounded almost hopeful.

Alistair forced himself to meet Cailan’s eyes, and cleared his throat. “Yes, your Majesty.”

“Right,” Loghain said, immediately clearing a pile of scattered parchment at his table. He revealed a map of Ostagar with a section of the wilds that had been charted. “Show me.”

Eris glanced at Duncan, who nodded. She stepped forward, and if she was intimidated at standing before two of the most powerful men in Ferelden, she didn’t show it.

Her fingers grazed over the map, and Alistair could almost see her putting the names and illustrations to the real places they’d visited. “Here,” she said after a moment, “Is where Alistair first detected them. We fled southwest, this way, and took this route around the bog…” she traced out their path with a tattooed finger, which briefly dipped into the blank, uncharted territory of the map before finding its way back. “It was here where Alistair stopped sensing them.”

Cailan, who was leaning over the table to get a better look at the map, shot Loghain a glance. Loghain didn’t return it.

“It’s battle, then,” Cailan breathed as he stood up straight. “Tonight.”

Alistair hadn’t been sure it was possible, but the natural scowl on Loghain’s face darkened.

“No sign of the archdemon?” Loghain asked, and Alistair realised with a jolt that he was being addressed directly.

“N-no, my Lord,” Alistair said, and quickly added, “Not yet, anyway.”

“Duncan,” Loghain barked. “Ready your forces.”

Duncan gave a deep nod that might have been taken for a bow. “I will get my recruits through the Joining at once, and the Wardens will stand ready.”

Duncan ushered Alistair and Eris both out of the tent, but not quickly enough that Alistair failed to catch Cailan’s face break into an excited grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot of fun writing from Alistair's POV, I hope you enjoyed reading! Thanks for your patience while I got this up, life's been a little wild lately but at least I don't have a darkspawn horde knocking on my door *fingerguns*


	5. Where All the Horses Fell

The whetstone whistled as Sereda drove it down the length of her oiled sword, refining the edge. She was careful not to put too fine a point on the blade. Too sharp and it would dull after the first cut; chip and spark as it struck the enemy steel, even the half-rotten armour of the darkspawn horde. She’d seen more than a few razor-sharp swords bandied about in this camp. She wondered how many of them would be wasted by the time it had to cut its third darkspawn down.

_Cloud-gazers_ , Sereda thought, not without some fondness. There was pageantry in the way they comported themselves, assembling into camps and divvying up battle lines. She wondered how effective those battle lines would prove. Wondered how troops assembled in formation would fare against an enemy that didn’t march to drum beats and battle plans. Wondered how their gilded courage would fare against animal hate.

Her sword was sharp enough. She folded her whetstone in cloth and placed it back in her travel sack, taking out her old, oil-stained rag and wiping down the blade until it shimmered, dark and smoky as a snuffed lantern. The others were coming back to their encampment as well, now. Most had gone to get food; Sereda had eaten some more of her travelling rations. She didn’t want to eat something hot before a fight. Old dwarven superstition. Better the food that had preserved than what you had just cooked, made of who-only-knew what.

Alim was the first back. He treated her to a wan smile and looked at her blade as though it were going to jump up and stab him. She sheathed it and watched as the others filed back. Daveth was next, holding a bowl to his chin and spooning whatever grey-brown goop had been served today into his mouth. Judging by the stains on his tunic, it was his second helping. They were waiting for Alistair and Eris to return with Duncan, once they let the King know that he really did have a war on his hands.

“We missed you at the cookfires,” Jory said genially, in a sort of half-hearted stab at conversation. Sereda chewed on another bit of blood sausage.

“Don’t trust camp food. How many people have you seen around here with the shits?” Sereda asked, absent-mindedly. Daveth snorted something spectacular, but didn’t stop shovelling his spoon into his mouth. Jory spluttered,

“You’re not… quite what I expected of a princess.”

“That’s rude,” Sereda said. Jory turned a faint pink colour and Sereda grinned. “You’re about what I expected of a knight, though, don’t worry.”

Jory frowned, quiet as he probably wondered whether she’d paid him a compliment or an insult, which suited Sereda fine. Alim shot her a knowing wink as Daveth finished his meal. Daveth perked up before the rest of them, and said,

“They’re coming back.”

Sereda had no idea that anyone was coming, but she supposed the sneak-thief had a better ear for heavily-armoured footfalls than she did. Shortly afterwards, she saw Alistair and Eris, followed by Duncan, who looked deep in thought. He was stroking his beard—marvellous beard, for a human—and didn’t speak immediately. Neither did the elf, which was about par for the course, as far as Sereda could tell. The Dalish woman sat down by their fire and stretched back, warming her feet by the embers. Sereda was struck irresistibly with the impression of a cat.

“Went that well, then?” Alim said dryly, as Alistair took a seat on a boulder he’d claimed outside his tent. Alistair sighed heavily and jerked his thumb in the direction of the main camp, just beyond the crumbling ruins they’d used as the basis for their shelter.

“Hear that?”

“Hear what?” Sereda asked, half-interested. Alistair’s lips formed a thin line, and he shook his head again.

“The camp’s mobilising. They’ve finally figured out the darkspawn aren’t here to exchange a few strongly-worded letters.” There was a grim set to his features that Sereda hadn’t seen there before. She followed his eyes to Duncan, who was still stroking that beard of his. The old man stepped forward into the clearing, his eyes scanning them all in turn.

“Alistair is right,” Duncan said at last. He cast his gaze to each of them, before his eyes settled on the flickering, dying remains of their fire. “We are preparing for the horde. And what we need now is not a gathering of a half-dozen recruits.” He looked back at them. “We need Wardens.”

* * *

Five goblets boiled with black smoke in the flickering firelight, as the torches Duncan had lit throughout Shattertop Tower burned softly, smelling of oil and cloth. Somehow that was what she was smelling. The damned oil and the cloth.

Not the darkspawn blood, pooling in the goblets like liquid death.

Alistair stood beside the table where Duncan had laid out the goblets, five simple steel things, dullish grey, all reportedly the property of some Warden long dead. You wouldn’t think there was a lick of history between those old chipped cups, but Duncan regarded them with a seriousness that, even for him, bore weight.

“The time is come,” Duncan said at last, turning from the table and towards them. “We cannot wait any longer. The horde is coming. You all know what that means.” He met their eyes, each of them in turn. “Without the Wardens, we cannot hope to defeat them. Even with those of you here, we may not have enough. Every Warden is needed.”

“Surely our sword-arms are just as strong without… what, do you expect us to _drink_ that?” Jory said, sounding scandalised. Eris shot him a withering look before Sereda had the chance to, but Duncan’s eyes snapped to Jory, and for the first time, Sereda felt deadly aware that this man, as gentle as he could be, was only a sheathed sword.

“Yes. I do. You will drink, as the Grey Wardens have since the first. You will drink and become Wardens. You will drink because you _must_. When you swore yourself to the Wardens, this is what you swore.” There was a note of warning in Duncan’s voice that Sereda hadn’t heard there before, and it sent a chill down her spine.

_Note to self: Do not fuck with._

“What, you’re scared of a cup?” Daveth said, laughing mirthlessly. “What’s worse, ser, the Blight, or a cup? You’re not the only one with people you care about.”

“Well said,” Alistair agreed, though he looked as though he regretted it at the outraged look on Jory’s face. “The ritual is what makes us Wardens. It grants us immunity to the taint and allows us to sense their presence. And there is the small matter that without these abilities, not a man or woman alive can slay the Archdemon.”

“Let’s get on with it, then,” Daveth said. He looked toward the cups as though he would reach out and take one, but glanced at Duncan.

Duncan inclined his head. “We have little time to stand on ceremony, but there are a few words that Wardens have spoken at the Joining since the first. Alistair, if you would?”

Any shred of the man who cracked wise and wore a smirk like it was part of his armour had disappeared. Alistair bowed his head solemnly, and Sereda felt compelled to join him. The others did, too, though she could sense Jory’s nervous glances.

“ _Join us, brothers and sisters_ ,” Alistair intoned, “ _Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant. Join us as we carry the duty that can not be forsworn. And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten, and that one day we shall join you_.”

A shiver travelled up Sereda’s spine. Duncan took the first cup, and held it out to Daveth, who was closest. The thief took it with surprising dignity.

“From this moment forth, Daveth,” Duncan said, as Daveth held the cup to his lips, “You are a Grey Warden.”

Daveth drained the cup, his face screwing up in disgust or something else. For a moment he looked like he might vomit, but then he swayed on his feet, clutching his stomach and bent over double as he groaned through clenched teeth. His cup clattered to the floor, and everyone stepped back in alarm as Daveth fell, too.

He seized for a few long seconds, his eyes rolling back in his head and his body shaking unnaturally, before he went limp.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

“I am sorry, Daveth,” Duncan said. The bitterness on his face was betrayed by the sadness in his voice.

Duncan was turning to reach for another cup when they all heard the chilling sound of a blade being drawn. Disappointed, but not exactly surprised, Sereda watched Jory hold his sword up defensively.

“There’s no glory in _this_!” He cried, gesturing desperately to Daveth’s body.

“We pay a heavy price to become what we are,” Duncan said, remaining calm. Sereda noticed the hand wrapped around the pommel of his own sword, ready to unsheathe. “Fate decrees that some pay their price sooner, rather than later.”

“No,” Jory said, the same unbridled rage he’d shown in the wilds once again flashing across his face. “I can fight the darkspawn without drinking their blood! You ask too much!”

_Schink_.

Duncan held his sword aloft. He did not step toward Jory, instead standing in a defensive pose as he waited to see if the man was truly beyond reason. Once again, every one in the group backed away—except Alistair, who looked enraged himself. Eris, who was closest to him, put a warning hand on his arm. He barely seemed to notice.

“There is no turning back,” Duncan told him, as Jory gripped his sword with both hands and rolled his shoulders. “Do not make me do this.”

“Rich, coming from the man feeding us darkspawn blood!” Jory’s voice turned into a yell, and he closed the gap between him and Duncan and raised his sword over his shoulders to strike.

Duncan moved faster than Sereda thought anyone could, much less an old man in plate. He side-stepped Jory’s blow, and let Jory’s own momentum drive his dagger into the knight’s chest.

Alim clasped a hand over his mouth, Eris’s grip on Alistair’s arm tightened, and Sereda herself barely swallowed her gasp.

Jory collapsed onto Duncan’s shoulder, wheezing and stricken, and Duncan sadly, gently, lowered him to the ground. Blood pooled out of Jory’s mouth, and he looked less a knight and more like a scared little boy as he died.

“I am sorry,” Duncan said, in the same voice he had for Daveth.

Silence set upon their dwindling group again as Duncan stood straight. He looked around at them all, the determination in his face unmarred by the two deaths, and reached for another cup.

Before he could speak, Eris stepped forward.

“Let me,” Eris said. Her eyes were wide but her voice was firm, and she held out her hand for the cup. Duncan nodded, and Sereda thought she could see the approval in his face.

“From this moment forth, Eris, you are a Grey Warden.”

The elf drank, and screwed her eyes shut, then dropped her cup just as Daveth had. Sereda’s heart sank to the bottom of her feet, but Eris lost consciousness slowly, and Alistair quickly gripped her under her arms and laid her lightly on the ground with an audible sigh of relief.

“She will recover soon,” Duncan explained when he saw the confusion on the faces of his remaining recruits. He didn’t give them long to celebrate the first of them surviving—he reached for another cup, handing this one to Alim.

The mage screwed his eyes shut as Duncan spoke the same words he had for the others, and downed the contents of the cup in one great gulp. He swayed a little, but his shiver didn’t turn into anything more violent, and Alistair helped him gently to the ground as his knees buckled and consciousness left him.

Sereda was so busy breathing a heavy sigh of relief that she nearly balked when Duncan turned to her, cup in hand.

“From this moment forth, Sereda,” he said, and Sereda found her mind buzzing—this was happening too quickly, but there was nothing she could do—“You are a Grey Warden.”

Sereda gripped the cup in both her hands, peering into its depths. She made the mistake of breathing in before she lifted it to her lips, and the scent of death and rot and something unfamiliar—ozone, perhaps from magic—filled her nostrils like they were the only smells left in the world.

Sereda drank before she became the first recruit to use her Joining cup as a vomit bucket. She drank before she could think about dying.

She glanced between Alistair and Duncan. She watched their faces distort as the world started to spin, then turn as inky black as the blood she drank.

And then she saw no more.

* * *

Sereda’s head still pounded, but she wasn’t sure if the lingering nausea she felt was from the Joining or simple nerves about the battle that was less than an hour away, by the scout’s reports.

She and Eris were in Alistair’s tent, which they’d co-opted to equip their Warden armour while the others prepared in Duncan’s larger tent.

Sereda sat on Alistair’s cot for a moment, admiring the tailored blue tunic and shining breastplate emblazoned with the Grey Warden crest—twin griffons, though the beasts had long since died out.

Eris was already unabashedly undressed, and pulling her own blue tunic over her head. Sereda noticed that the elf’s armour was lighter than her own—a simple breastplate and tasset rather than a full suit—and wondered when Duncan had found the time to have the armour made for them, or if the Wardens had a stockpile somewhere.

“It suits you,” Sereda offered.

Eris looked surprised at being addressed for a moment. “Thank you,” she said, her voice a little stilted. She fiddled with the buckles on her breastplate. “I’ve never worn armour before. Would you…?”

“Sure,” Sereda shrugged, hopping off the cot and taking the breastplate from Eris. She spent a few moments ensuring the buckles were secure but not too tight as to restrict her movement, then showed her how to fasten the tasset to her hips. When they were done, Eris tested out her mobility, bending at the waist and stretching each leg back and forth in turn.

“How’s it feel?”

“Sturdy,” Eris said, “But surprisingly light.” She hesitated before adding, “Need any help with yours?”

“I got it,” Sereda waved her off. “I wore my first suit of armour at fourteen. Practically a second skin.”

While Sereda set about equipping her shiny new Warden gear, Eris took her place on the cot. She fastened a small leather pack to the belt of her tasset, and there was a faint clinking of bottles as she took stock of her belongings. Sereda wondered idly whether they were poisons; she’d fought with a few of her own people who’d learned to make small bombs with volatile mixtures. They were an incredible asset in a fight—if your aim was good enough.

The sounds of the army camp around them rose to a buzz, and Sereda felt her blood rushing in her ears. It wouldn’t be much longer now. Her hands shook slightly as she buckled herself into the iron plate.

“Are you really a princess?” Eris asked suddenly. Sereda cleared her throat.

“I _was_ ,” she said pointedly, and shook her head in distaste. “Got framed for murder, exiled, and now I’m less than dirt to my people.”

“I—oh. I’m…”

Sereda waved off Eris’s ‘sorry’. “That’s Orzammar politics for you. Suppose your tale is just as tragic. Don’t think Duncan gets a lot of happy volunteers.”

She’d left the question open-ended, so that Eris had an out if she chose not to respond. Surprisingly, she did.

“I have the Blight sickness,” she explained. “Or… had, I suppose.”

Sereda remembered Eris volunteering for the cup after the two grisly deaths of their companions. “Ah,” she said, a little lamely. “Say—when you passed out, did you have those weird dreams, too? With the dragon?”

“After the Joining? Yes.”

“Is that what dreams are like all the time?”

“They’re not quite so scary, usually,” Eris said, with a sad smile. “Your people don’t dream, do you?”

“No, thank the Stone.”

Eris gave Sereda’s shoulder a friendly squeeze. “I’m sorry you won’t have happier ones as well, then.”

A voice from outside interrupted Sereda before she could respond. It was Alim. “Knock, knock,” he called, and the tip of his mage’s staff appeared through the tent flap, followed by the rest of him. His other hand was covering his eyes. “Are you two decent? Duncan says we’ve a war to attend, or something.”

Beside Sereda, Eris took a deep breath. “It’s time, then.”

“Not for you,” Alim said, peeping between his fingers. “Duncan says you and Alistair are going to the Tower of Ishal, instead.”

“What?” Eris’s mouth was agape. She sounded insulted. “Why?”

“Something about a very important beacon. Don’t worry, Alistair’s very excited, too.”

Privately, Sereda thought Duncan was making a wise tactical choice. While certainly capable in a skirmish, neither Alistair nor Eris had been in a battle of this scale. Alim would certainly be back with the mages from their much safer vantage point, and while Sereda herself had never faced numbers like this, before her exile she’d commanded her crew against dozens of darkspawn on their excursions in the Deep Roads. She doubted the almost-templar and woodland elf had any such experience.

Sereda followed Alim and Eris out of the tent to rejoin Duncan and Alistair, finding herself bizarrely struck with the image of Jory’s fallen body. Whatever her opinion of him, she wouldn’t have minded having the bulky knight with the big sword at her side tonight as she faced down the horde.

* * *

It was raining, because of course it was.

It had rained often since Sereda had come to Ostagar, but she still wasn’t used to it. Perhaps she never would be. She’d heard her people talk about falling into the sky up on the surface—superstitious nonsense, of course—but no one ever talked about how strange it was that water just poured from the clouds sometimes.

She didn’t have time to marvel at it the way she had on previous nights. The muddy, swampy ground was perfect for slipping and getting a darkspawn sword in your gut. Or stomped by an ogre. Or trampled by your own army in the confusion of battle.

Sereda had, so far, avoided all three. She adjusted her footing just in time to keep her balance as she parried a vicious swing from a hurlock. Their locked blades hovered in the air for a moment before she used the curve of the creature’s gnarled, ungraceful sword to her advantage, pushing down its blade with all her strength and quickly bringing up her own to slice into its neck.

“Another one?” Yelled the burly elven Warden who’d stood next to her in the Vanguard. The flow of battle had kept them near each other so far, and he was easily holding his own against a duo of darkspawn.

“Two already!” Sereda yelled back as she steadied herself for a genlock’s approach.

“I’m on seventeen!”

Sereda barked a laugh as she cut down the pitiful creature. “Bullshit!” She called, spinning out of the way of the genlock’s falling body to cut into a third darkspawn who’d begun worrying the nameless elf.

He used the opportunity to fell the two others fighting him in quick succession. “Thanks,” He called, and flashed her a grin. “Welcome to the Wardens!”

They were separated soon enough, though Sereda barely noticed. She found that the darkspawn didn’t have any spectacular tactics for such a large battle, and it was rather like the fighting she’d seen already in her Deep Roads command.

The biggest difference was that it just didn’t seem to end.

Every time she killed one, another took its place. Every moment that wasn’t spent balancing defense and offense was spent checking her flank, because the darkspawn pushed wildly into their line with no apparent instinct for their own lives. They swarmed the battlefield like an eruption of insects from dirt, which Sereda supposed wasn’t an inaccurate description.

She found a rhythm. Cut, parry, dodge, feint, kill. Check her flank, repeat. When her arms began to ache and her knees shook and rain and sweat in equal measure stung her eyes, it was her own hard-earned stamina that kept her going.

That, and hope. A half-second’s reprieve gave her a chance to glance up at the tower of Ishal where Alistair and Eris must be already lighting the beacon. Sereda took a quick breath in before engaging a snarling hurlock, bolstered at the thought of the vast bulk of Ferelden’s army hidden in the valley behind the western hill, ready to charge the darkspawn’s flank the moment the beacon lit.

_Cut_. Not much longer now, she reckoned. _Parry_. An ogre crashed toward their line in the distance, but it wasn’t coming in her direction. _Dodge_. A streak of lightning danced across the sky, throwing blood-soaked bodies into sharp relief. _Feint_. The hurlock growled like a demon, unweary and unfettered. _Kill_. Its dying body was knocked roughly out of the way by a genlock who bared its teeth and shrieked at her in greeting.

It went on, and on, and on. Darkspawn flooded the battlefield in an endless tidal wave that could only be beaten back so much by four hundred soldiers. They were losing ground, and quickly now. Sereda couldn’t spot any of her fellow Wardens near her, or see the glint of the king’s golden armour. The cries she heard were borne increasingly more of agony than ferocious challenge.

Sereda’s chest was heaving in exhaustion, and the only lights in the sky were the flashes from the storm or the mages’ spells flying overhead. The tower of Ishal remained dark, and the western rise cruelly empty of the thousands of soldiers that awaited the call.

Sereda’s gasping breath turned into a choke as a blackened blade finally caught her in the gut. She swung her own sword a little wildly in response, and twisted her ankle in a blazing sear of hot pain up her calf as she turned. She managed to connect to darkspawn flesh just before her ankle gave out and her endurance gave up on her. She fell into the mud in a heap, hitting her head against someone’s armour.

She looked up at the stormy sky, blinking the falling rain from her eyes. The battle looked strange from down here, and the thunderous noise of it oddly far away. She saw more of the mottled grey-brown armour of darkspawn than she did shining plate and chain. A blaze of orange in her peripheral caught her attention, and she turned her vaguely aching head in time to watch the tower of Ishal light up.

Sereda snorted. “Don’t rush on my account,” she muttered.

Screams and snarls and clanging steel turned into a dim buzz in her ears. She thought someone might have leapt over her legs, or maybe tripped, but she didn’t register much except her own breathing and the warm blood bubbling in her throat.

Rain splashed onto her cheeks, and she sighed at the thick grey storm clouds as they darkened to black. She realised she would have liked to see the stars again.


	6. Witches and Wild Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, I'm so sorry for the delay in updating! Real life's been kicking my ass, and it took way too long to be able to sink back into Thedas. Updates should be more frequent from now on; I'm planning to post a new chapter every 1-2 weeks and I'll do my best to keep to this schedule! I've got a longer chapter ahead to make up for the delay, I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Second, thank you so much to everyone who's left a comment, kudo, or bookmarked this fic! I know Origins is an older game, and I'm so happy to see I'm not the only one not ready to let it go yet. Thank you so much for coming on this ride with me, we're just getting started!

Eris willed herself to wake and, upon feeling the lancing pain in her gut, forced herself unconscious again.

She wasn’t sure how long this pattern of wake and sleep lasted; it could have been hours or weeks for all she knew or cared. Curtains of black seemed to lift and flutter back over her eyes at will, and it was impossible to tell how much time had passed between them. Between the darkness she saw soft flashes of a beautiful, dark-haired woman who pressed slender hands to Eris’s skin—her stomach, her leg, her throat—and if it weren’t for the pain that wasn’t supposed to exist in the afterlife, she’d be sure she was long dead in some cozy spot of the Beyond that smelled of lavender and was tended by wood nymphs.

The memory of Tamlen, of the tower, the battle, and the Wardens stirred in her mind, but latching on to any one thought while her head felt like a slurry of damp grass was like trying to catch rain in her outstretched palm.

Eris sniffed at a familiar smell. Maybe the damp grass was a poultice. Soft hands lifted her shirt and her skin twitched in protest as warm, slick herbs were pressed to her stomach. She groaned and turned her head to the side, her cheek coming to rest on the softness of her own hair. The lavender smell was stronger here, and she wondered when she’d had time to wash it. The last she remembered, it had been wet with sweat and darkspawn blood…

The curtain lifted more harshly than before, and all at once Eris was aware of the scratchy blanket she was under, and the bright grey sunlight streaming in through the windows of… wherever she was. She might have thought it was the Keeper’s cabin, though it was a little bigger and made of stone and damp pinewood rather than the rich oak of an aravel.

But it had the same heady mixture of scents. From the stick of incense smoking in the corner, from the herbs tied up at the window to dry; from the game strung up and ready to be butchered. It even had the same tickle of ozone in the air, soft as a kiss against her skin. Sure enough, a potion in a pot over the hearth was simmering in its own blend of roots and magic. The smell of petrichor and sulfur and damp blew in with the biting breeze from outside, and Eris knew she was back in the Korcari wilds.

In the corner of the room, with her back turned to Eris as she thumbed through some truly ancient looking books, was her wood nymph. Eris blushed deeply as she realised the nymph from her half-dreams was a very real, very human woman. A woman who seemed to sense that she was awake immediately.

“Well, well,” she said, crossing the room to meet Eris at her bedside. “Your eyes have opened often since I've tended you, but this is the first time I see any life in them at all.”

The woman was the picture of wild, youthful beauty. She was dressed in immaculate robes dyed a rich plum and a rather more tattered fur-lined leather skirt. Hair as dark as night framed her face, and her eyes were lined with dark kohl.

Her piercing, vivid yellow eyes.

“It’s you,” Eris said dully, and she strained to sit up. The woman shushed her, pressing a half-gloved hand against her shoulder.

“Don’t get up. That poultice must sit for a while, yet. Here,” she grabbed an earthen cup from the table next to Eris’s bed. “Drink this.”

Eris expected water, but there was something slightly earthy and bitter mixed with it. Her dry throat pushed any suspicions she had to the side and she drank greedily, and the woman answered her unasked question.

“A simple draught for your fever,” she explained as she grabbed a chair from the other side of the room, scraping it to Eris’s side. The woman sat and watched her drink, eyes boring into her. “The arrow you took, it was poisoned. We’ve been fighting the infection.”

Eris gasped for breath as she drained the contents of the cup, ignoring what the stranger was saying. “It’s you,” she repeated, her vocal chords waking up with the rest of her now. “You’re the wolf from the wilds.”

It sounded insane, Eris knew, even if she hadn’t just been told she had a fever. But she knew it was true even before the woman gave her a small, pleased smile that tucked a little mole into the hollow of her cheek.

“I knew if anyone in your group would recognise me, ‘twould be you,” she said, shifting in her chair to make herself comfortable. “Yes, the wolf was me, though the form you see before you is my truest. You may call me Morrigan. And you are Eris, if your friend is to believed.”

“My friend…? Alistair?”

“The hulking, dim-witted one who’s ready to fall on his blade in grief, yes; the very same.”

“He’s here?” Eris looked around the room as if Alistair were crouching in a corner, hidden by dust and cobwebs.

“He’s outside. His injuries were not as severe as yours. He is… not taking the news of what happened at Ostagar well.” Morrigan looked discomfited now, as though she were worried Eris would take it poorly too.

“Please, Morrigan,” Eris asked, “What happened? How did we get here?”

Morrigan pursed her lips, hesitating for a moment before explaining. “It has been two days since your rescue. Your cavalry fled before they ever earned the name, and the darkspawn won your battle.”

Eris’s sluggish mind was swimming, and she let her head fall back onto her pillow. She and Alistair had been delayed lighting the beacon, yes, but surely not enough that the king’s forces would be so completely overwhelmed? Surely Loghain would have realised their signal wasn’t coming in time and joined the fray? Surely, surely, surely… the only thing Eris was sure of was that she was way out of her depth.

She took a slow breath in and out, before finally turning her head again to Morrigan. “Were there any other survivors?”

Morrigan seemed to breathe a small sigh of relief at her reaction. “Besides the two of you? Stragglers, perhaps, who ran when they saw their death coming. But I’m afraid the grounds of Ostagar are littered with nothing but corpses and darkspawn now.”

“The Wardens… they were in the vanguard. And they wouldn’t have run. _Mythal’lin_ ,” Eris swore under her breath. “Are we the only ones left?”

“It does seem that way,” Morrigan said, and Eris realised that while the woman was blunt it was only out of unease. She shifted in her chair again, her hands clasping the hem of her skirt. “That may be why mother rescued you, in fact.”

“It was your mother that rescued us? How?”

“She transformed into a giant bird, and plucked the two of you from atop the tower,” Morrigan said, arching a brow and crossing her arms as if waiting for Eris to challenge her. She looked almost disappointed when she didn’t. “Your friend was reluctant to believe that.”

“He didn’t see you as a wolf,” Eris said absently. She grimaced a bit as a wave of nausea hit her; the last thing she wanted to do was puke on the woman who’d saved her life. Or at least that woman’s daughter.

“Why would your mother save us? Why not the Warden-Commander, or the king?”

“’Tis her… way,” Morrigan said, her eyes rolling toward the ceiling. “Flemeth does the strangest things and rarely deigns to tell me why. If you wish to attempt to pry her reasoning from her, you should speak with her.” Morrigan cleared her throat, as though embarrassed she’d been speaking for so long. “But yes, it was she who rescued you and did the brunt of magical work on your wounds; I can throw together a poultice, but I am no healer.”

Eris gave her a smile weakened by the headache now pounding behind her brow. “ _Ma serannas_ , Morrigan. Thank you for your aid.”

Morrigan blinked, taken aback. “I—you are welcome.” She leaned forward suddenly to check Eris’s wound, throwing back the blanket and lifting the hem of Eris’s shirt to her ribs without compunction. Eris leaned forward to see the damage herself.

As Morrigan peeled back the poultice, Eris saw her skin knitted together with both stitches and magic. The wound was an angry red and weeping slightly.

“You’re healing well,” Morrigan said, as though reading her thoughts. She pressed the back of her fingers to Eris’s forehead, before reaching for her throat and gently prodding the sides of her neck for swelling. Eris felt her cheeks grow warm at the misplaced memory of Morrigan’s touch, and wondered—or rather hoped—that the draught had the side-effect of strange dreams. “And your fever is abating. With a few day’s supply of draught for the road, you should be well enough to travel.”

“Travel… where?” Eris asked.

“That, I do not know,” Morrigan looked suddenly disinterested as she drew away and busied herself with disposing of the poultice and gathering the cups and herbs that lay at Eris’s bedside. “But you cannot stay here. Speak to mother outside, when you are able.” And with that, she left the room, leaving Eris quite alone.

Eris lay in the bed for a moment, staring blankly at the three dead hares on the wall across from her. Though the muscles in her limbs longed for movement, her mind wanted to stay in the scratchy but warm bed in the little hut inside the wilds forever. She glanced out the window, seeing only trees and grey sky, but the thought of being outside in the world—the same world where Tamlen was gone, where Duncan was dead, where her precious mount and last gift from her clan was lost, and where she was one of just two surviving Wardens—seemed simply too much. She blinked at the clouds outside, surprised to feel a tear rolling down her cheek. And then another.

Too much. Far, far too much. More than anyone should have to deal with in the span of a fortnight. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand, nauseous with shame and guilt from how sorry she was feeling for herself.

In the quiet of the hut, with only the bubbling potion and the wind and insect noises from outside, she thumbed Tamlen’s ring on her finger as though she could summon him that way. A phrase from the _Vir Tanadhal_ crept into her head, one she and Tamlen had recited together when they became hunters. She whispered the words to herself with a desperation she hadn’t felt since she was a girl who wanted nothing more in the world than to prove herself.

_Tirdana, tel’dana_. Bend, but do not break.

* * *

Eris’s cloak had survived her strange journey from the tower, as well as her armour, her knife, her bow and quiver, and most of her arrows. She thanked Mythal for small mercies as she wrapped the cloak around herself and over the Warden tunic and trousers she’d shrugged on. She left her bow and quiver in the neat pile she’d found them in at the end of her bed, but looped her knife through her belt out of habit.

Leaving the hut, she looked around first for Alistair. He was sitting in front of a pond a distance away, bundled in his own cloak with his back to her. Eris hesitated. She felt like she should go to him, but knew she should meet Morrigan’s mother—Flemeth, as Morrigan had called her—first.

If it weren’t for the fact that there was only one other woman there, Eris would never have guessed that the aged, decrepit, and frankly hideous woman sitting at the cookfire was Morrigan’s mother. She wore a dirty, patched dress, and clutched a faded shawl around her hunched shoulders. Where Morrigan’s hair was shining and tossed to the back of her head with wild elegance, Flemeth’s hung from her head like burnt straw. In her gaze Eris saw the same yellow eyes that Morrigan had—if Morrigan’s had been faded by cataracts and a century.

But Flemeth did not carry herself like a shambling old woman. Eris saw wisdom and cleverness in her ancient face, and the memory of a memory from her childhood came creeping up on her.

“ _Asha’bellanar_.” Eris said her name with equal parts awe, fear, and disbelief.

The woman hooted and slapped her bony knee. “Haven’t heard that one in a few years,” she laughed, delighted. “Oh, I thought it was lost when the last clan moved on from this swamp.” Eris blinked in surprise, and Morrigan rolled her eyes, but Flemeth continued on, unbidden. “They’re like apples in a tree. That one was gleaming, but bitter at its core. Even the best apples must ripen and fall and die, you see.”

“Mother…” Morrigan groaned.

“Oh, permit an old woman her memories fraught and fond, Morrigan,” Flemeth said, her laughter dying down. “And a young Dalish her superstition.”

“I’m not superstitious,” Eris said, before she could help herself.

“Oh? What do you believe then, girl?”

Eris bowed her head. “I believe I have you to thank for saving us.”

Flemeth tapped an arthritic finger against her mouth and smiled. “Quick one, are you?” She said, and nodded to herself. She glanced over at Alistair, then back to Eris. “Yes, I see it now. But I’m afraid I haven’t saved you, child. Perhaps the silence of the grave would have been kinder than the chaos that is to come.”

“The Blight,” Eris answered the question Flemeth had let dangle in the air, but Flemeth once again ignored her. 

“Kindness is not the answer nearly as often as fools would believe,” she continued. “Though I have more answers than most, this one does leave me wondering. Perhaps you are the answer—or is that the question? Hah!”

Morrigan stood to stir the stew, and gave Eris a look somewhere between weary and apologetic. “She wishes to know why you saved her, mother. Not listen to your ramblings.”

“If the Blight is the question,” Flemeth said slowly, as though she were explaining a simple concept to a dull child, “The answer is the Grey Wardens, is it not?”

“But—” Eris stammered, and found she hated questioning Flemeth. “But I’m as new to the Wardens as they come. I didn’t even want to be one. A-and Alistair had only been with them a few months. We can’t simply fight off a Blight on our own.”

“Not simply, no,” Flemeth said with a vague smile. “No one has ever done the impossible _simply_.”

Eris clenched and unclenched her fists, grateful for the cloak hiding her nervous gestures. Flemeth’s smile broadened into one that might be described as kindly.

“Deciding which way to fall into the inevitable abyss is a terrible thing to consider alone,” she said. “Go and talk to your fellow Warden. Answers emerge when questions are put together, after all. And then… we’ll have lunch!” Flemeth clapped her hands together and stared hungrily at the pot, and Morrigan made a loud noise of annoyance.

Eris recognised herself as dismissed, and turned to make the small trek to the pond. It wasn’t that far, but her arrow wound protested with every step, as well as a swollen bruise on her leg she’d yet to inspect but could definitely feel. Alistair didn’t hear her until she was nearly on top of him, and he turned in alarm that broke into heartbreakingly sincere relief.

“You’re alive!” He cried, launching at her in a tight hug that made her wince. “Oh, I’m sorry... the darkspawn did a number on you, didn’t they? I thought you were dead for sure, the witches barely let me see you, they kept saying you were recovering but how was I to know? Maker, I’m so glad you’re all right.” He hugged her again, more gently this time. Eris patted his back a little lamely.

When he drew away, Eris saw just how broken he looked. Brilliant bruises dotted the parts of his body that were visible, and his forearm was heavily bandaged, but it was the raw, ragged grief in his face that was difficult to look at. He pushed his hair back and rubbed his palms against his cheeks, as though trying to wake himself up.

“They’re dead,” he said, his voice hollow. “They’re all dead. Duncan...” his voice broke. “The Wardens, the army, the king... how could Loghain do this? He’s known Cailan since he was a baby! There’ll be civil war!”

Eris could see the outrage and despair still washing relentlessly over him. Absent of anything decent she could think to say, she simply listened.

“This is a nightmare,” Alistair said, fresh tears welling up in his eyes. “It should have been me, not Duncan. Duncan deserved better. He...” Alistair choked, and turned away.

“I’m sorry,” Eris whispered, and hesitated for a moment, uncertain, before resting a hand on his shoulder. The hand wearing Tamlen’s ring. He was always better at this sort of thing than she was. Alistair sobbed quietly, and Eris searched for something, anything to say that might help.

Instead, she found a question. “What’s that?” She asked, spotting a scroll of parchment in Alistair’s lap. He sniffed and looked down at the scroll, a sad smile tugging at his lips.

“The last thing Duncan gave me,” he said, wiping his eyes with his forearm before picking up the parchment. “Some Warden documents. For safekeeping, he said. He didn’t have a lot of time to explain, we were all blindsided that night. They were still in my belt. Of all the things to survive...” He swept his thumb gently across the Warden crest at the top of the page.

“Can I see that?” Eris asked.

“Yes, of course,” Alistair cleared his throat and carefully handed her the scroll. On touching it, Eris realised the parchment was actually a very old, but very cared for vellum. Neat, official-looking script decorated the page. Eris squinted to make it out; it had been a while since she’d read Common, and the tight, looping script used an outdated form of it to boot. She unfurled the scroll a little more, and blinked in surprise when she saw a section of words in elven below it.

Though more familiar to her than Common or the older runic elven of Arlathan, it was almost as archaic and difficult to parse as the previous paragraph. Her lips, pressed together in concentration as she read, fell open as be began to _understand_.

“Alistair,” she said slowly, “This is a treaty.”

“Oh,” he said, and rubbed his nose. “Duncan’s signed it at the top there, see, along with all the previous commanders...”

“No, I mean... this is a Grey Warden treaty that compels elves, humans—” she scanned the rest of the document, “—dwarves and mages to aid us during a Blight!”

“What?!” Alistair’s mouth hung open, and he took the scroll from her, unfurling it all the way back to the top where the Common script sat. “Maker, I... I was so busy staring I didn’t try to _read_ it... didn’t even realise why he gave it to me.”

“Alistair,” said Eris, trying to keep her voice even, “This mess we’re in right now is exactly _why_ Duncan gave this to you. The real reason he sent us to the Tower.”

Alistair shook his head in awe. “He... he knew this might happen. He was always prepared, for anything, I just... wow. He trusted me with this. He trusted _us_.”

Eris smiled at him, and Alistair gave her a small but genuine smile back. “Come on,” she said, leaning on an unbruised spot on his shoulder to heave herself up. “I think Flemeth and Morrigan will share that stew.”

Alistair carefully furled and latched the scroll before accepting Eris’s proffered hand up. “Lead the way.”

* * *

Flemeth regarded the two of them as they sat around the fire eating the stew Morrigan had made. The meat was surprisingly tender and steeped in rich herbs, and Eris found her appetite starting to return to her. She wasn’t sure if it had been her grief or the darkspawn sickness that had curbed it, but her stomach was grateful for food.

“So,” Flemeth began as she noisily chewed, “Tell me how you plan to defeat this Blight.”

Alistair shifted uncomfortably next to Eris and looked hopefully at her, but she had a mouthful of hot stew herself.

“Well,” he began, sounding just as uncertain as Eris felt, “The treaties have our path set for us. We’ll visit the mage tower, Orzammar, find a Dalish clan…” he trailed off, glancing at Eris. She swallowed quickly.

“My clan has moved on since I left,” she explained, “But it shouldn’t be difficult for me to track them down. They’ll still be somewhere in the Brecilian.”

Alistair nodded gratefully. “Right. It’s the last part of the treaty that concerns me. It’s for Ferelden’s standing armies. With Cailan dead, there’s no monarch to honour the treaty. Loghain made sure of that.”

“Doesn’t Ferelden have a queen?” Eris asked. She was sure she’d heard something about a queen before.

Alistair grimaced. “Queen Anora. She’s Loghain’s _daughter_.”

“This Loghain may prove to be a bigger problem than the archdemon,” Flemeth said darkly. “How do you intend to stop him?”

“Put an arrow through his eye?” Eris suggested. Alistair laughed bitterly.

“He’ll be on his way back to Denerim now, with almost all of Ferelden’s troops with him. It’d be suicide to even try.”

“I’m a decent shot.”

Alistair’s eyes were suddenly alight. “We need someone who can stand against him. Someone like Arl Eamon!” At the blank look on the faces of the women around him, he explained. “He’s Cailan’s uncle, the lord of Redcliffe; he’s beloved in Ferelden. Not only that, but he wasn’t at Ostagar—he still has all his men! I know him, he’ll be disgusted by Loghain’s betrayal. He’ll help us for sure.”

Eris frowned. “How do you know a lord?”

“It… It’s a long story,” Alistair said, looking away. “What’s important is that we get to him, sooner rather than later. Loghain will tell the nobility whatever he wishes about the battle, and we need to make sure they know the truth.”

“I’m confused,” Eris said. “So this Loghain is Ferelden’s general, and the queen’s his daughter… does he want the throne? Is that how succession works?”

“No, it’s not,” Alistair shook his head. “I’ve never heard Loghain to be ambitious. Maybe that’s changed. Maybe he wanted Anora ruling alone? Or maybe… I don’t know. I just don’t understand it.”

“Men’s hearts hold shadows darker than any Blight,” Flemeth said gravely, then licked some sauce off her spoon. “Whatever his reasons, he is now an obstacle in your way.”

Alistair let out a shaky breath. “Can we really do this, then?” He looked at Eris, and she saw a glimmer of hope in his eyes ready to light.

She didn’t want to be the one to snuff it out, no matter how hopeless she felt herself. She wasn’t a Warden—she’d drunk the darkspawn blood, sure, but there was more to it than that. She wasn’t battle-hardened, she couldn’t inspire armies to follow her. She didn’t even know the name of Ferelden’s queen until a minute ago. She was just a hunter in one of Ferelden’s feared and ignored Dalish clans, and she’d lost the love of her life barely two weeks ago. That’s all she was, really. Just a grieving girl with a bow, far from home.

Eris gave Alistair the most confident smile she could manage. “We can certainly try,” she said. “If a Blight doesn’t rouse people to action, I can’t imagine what would.”

“Morrigan, take the bowls, would you?” Flemeth crooned. Morrigan, who’d been sitting silently and simply listening, scoffed before doing what Flemeth asked. Alistair and Eris stood to help her, but Flemeth waved Eris off. “Stay. I must speak with you.”

Alistair looked over his shoulder, as though pleading with Eris not to leave him alone with Morrigan. Eris gave him an apologetic smile. She could practically hear the elders of her clan scolding her for even thinking of not honouring a direct request from The Woman of Many Years.

Flemeth beckoned her closer, and Eris walked up to her until she was near enough for the old woman to extend a frail arm and place it on her shoulder with surprising strength.

“Listen to me, _da’assan_ ,” she said, and the elven slipped so easily from the witch’s tongue that it took a moment for Eris to even realise she’d spoken it. “I have two gifts to offer you. The first is advice: there are many forks in the road you are about to walk. Think carefully where each turn might take you, and remember that the greatest succour can sometimes be found in the strangest dusty corners.” Flemeth spoke slowly, carefully, and Eris took in every word like a hungry bird to scattered seeds. “And on that note,” Flemeth continued, now giving Eris a wide smile that showed off crooked, brown teeth, “My second gift for you is that which I hold most dear in this cruel world. My Morrigan has power and knowledge that will be of great use to you on your journey. She will join you, and help you defeat this Blight and all the poisons it brings with it. I do this for you because you must not fail. Do you understand?”

Eris nodded numbly. “Yes.” Flemeth squeezed her shoulders and brought a wizened hand up to pat her cheek.

“Good girl,” she said, and drew back as Morrigan and Alistair returned from the hut.

Morrigan still looked wholly disinterested as she joined them. She picked imaginary lint off her robes as her boots crunched in the grass. “Now, mother dear, shall I prepare a few draughts so our guests can be on their way?”

Flemeth winked at Eris, and waved Morrigan off. “Not necessary, girl. You can prepare them on the road.”

“Road?” Morrigan’s head snapped up. “What road?”

“Whichever these Grey Wardens choose to take, of course. You will be joining them.”

“What?” Morrigan’s eyes grew nearly as wide as Alistair’s did. Flustered was an ill-fitting look on the elegant witch, Eris thought. “You’ve decided this _for_ me, have you?” The venom in the young woman’s voice was caustic, and Alistair surreptitiously took a few steps away as though she might start throwing bolts of lightning. Flemeth looked only mildly amused.

“All the world waiting to be beneath your feet, all the opportunities lurking in the shadows—you would let these be swallowed by the Blight because you’re afraid?”

“I am not afraid.” Morrigan seethed in disbelief, her words a hiss between her teeth. “Do not taunt me while you so casually dictate my fate!”

“They need you, girl,” Flemeth told her calmly. “Without you, they will surely fail. You know what this means.”

Alistair broke the tension by making things more tense. “Not that we wouldn’t appreciate the help,” he said, rubbing his neck, “But traveling with an apostate might just make things more dangerous for us.”

Flemeth actually threw her head back and laughed. “Bah! Morrigan has been toying with the Templars since she learned to bat her lashes. The Order is not as canny as they would have had you believe, boy.”

Alistair blanched. “How did you—?”

“Your aid would be greatly appreciated Morrigan,” Eris interjected quickly, “if you decide to lend it.”

Morrigan’s outrage simmered gradually into reluctant acceptance. Her shoulders drooped, and she blew out a harsh breath of air that sent her dark fringe flying. “Oh, very well then!” She rounded on Flemeth. “I would have you know I’m not doing this at your kindly ‘suggestion’, _mother_ ,” she spat the word like an insult, ignoring Flemeth’s unaffected smile.Morrigan swept her gaze straight past Alistair and addressed Eris. “Fine. We’ll make for a village called Lothering, and you two can decide where we go from there. Gather your things and I shall gather mine. I’d have us out of this swamp by nightfall, and as far from this crazy old bat as can be.”

Flemeth’s delighted laugh drowned out the crickets’ song.

* * *

The moon was high in the sky before Morrigan allowed them rest in a lightly wooded copse. Flemeth’s hut was far behind and shielded by thick forest, mud as deep as a man’s thighs, and streams just too large and deep to be easy to cross. It was only with Morrigan’s expert guidance that their small and slightly hobbled group was able to follow a thin trail that Eris knew she wouldn’t have been able to find on her own. In fact, she wondered if she’d be able to find it at all if she returned without Morrigan. The swamp seemed to breathe around them, like a giant shifting in its sleep just past her field of vision. It reminded her, strangely, of home—of the woods that bent and sighed to the Keeper’s silent whims; the trees that creaked as Dalish aravels found paths that disappeared on foot.

Though traversing it was dizzying, the Korcari Wilds remained quiet. Flemeth had warned them that they may encounter ragtag darkspawn bands, but she hadn’t seemed too concerned. “Most are feasting at Ostagar now, and will be for some time,” she’d told them. Nevertheless, the old witch had insisted on giving Alistair a pouch of burgundy leaves that Eris had felt the touch of magic on. “For the itchy spines you give the ‘spawn,” she’d said with a wink.

Eris had been flummoxed, sure that Flemeth was speaking in riddles again until Alistair explained. “The darkspawn can sense us, just as we sense them.”

“I haven’t sensed any darkspawn.”

“Not yet,” Alistair said, and then sighed. “It can take a few days. How Flemeth knows all this, though,” he added in an undertone, “I can’t rightly imagine.”

“I’m old, boy, not deaf,” she had called over her shoulder. “Old enough to know some secrets.”

Eris stretched her tired muscles as she dropped the tattered satchel Morrigan had given her. The fever was pressing in again, and the last two hours of their journey had been difficult with aches and chills wracking her body. Her limbs shook as she walked, and each sticky step through mud made her chest heave in exhaustion. She knew Morrigan wanted to continue on a bit further, but she also knew the witch could tell Eris would be useless if she wasn’t given rest. Eris untangled herself from her bow and quiver and lay down on the dirt with her head resting on her pack, quite tired of being sick.

Alistair seemed almost as exhausted as he let his own (even more tattered, Eris noticed) borrowed satchel fall to the ground. “I’ll take first watch,” he announced. He heaved himself down next to his bag, crossed his arms over his knees and went silent.

“I’ll take the next then, I suppose,” Morrigan said, sitting down cross-legged on the ground. Eris shifted to her side, blearily watching Morrigan’s silhouette. She was fetching something from her pack, the edges of her frame lit up in silver from the moonlight peaking through the shivering tree tops. Eris squeezed her eyes shut, forcing the memory of her fever dreams away.

When she opened her eyes again, Morrigan was holding something that glinted in the moonlight. A glass jar. She cupped its sides in both her hands for a moment, and a warm light began to gleam within. In its glow, Morrigan pulled out all kinds of herbalism paraphernalia from a pouch within her pack.

Eris watched her work in the soft shadows of the magical light. The smell of elfroot and embrium bark wafted over to Eris’s spot as Morrigan ground roots to a powder and crushed seeds from dry, crunching leaves between her fingers. The image of the witch at work grew blurry until all that Eris could make out was the shimmering little light in the jar, and the clinking of bottles and pouring of water.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but she must have drifted off because she startled when Morrigan was suddenly next to her, squeezing Eris’s shoulder to wake her.

“Here,” she said quietly, pressing two bottles of draught into Eris’s slack hands. “Drink one now, and one in the morning if you wish to reach Lothering tomorrow.”

“ _Ma serannas_ ,” Eris whispered back, and unstoppered the draught to drink it all in one gulp. It was earthy and strangely warm. “Wake me when your watch is done.”

Morrigan took the empty bottle and nodded, drawing away. She waved a hand over the jar and the light within gently flickered out, the moonlight following soon after as Eris was pulled to a deep, dreamless slumber by fever and medicine.

* * *

The sky was a weak pink and dotted with clouds before Morrigan decided it was time to wake the Wardens. She’d planned to have them all on their way before the sun was up, but truthfully her own limbs ached and her tired eyes begged for rest. She’d even caught a stealthy nap during her watch, but she refused to feel bad about it as she had, after all, spent the night setting up wards around their camp. The wards would have been enough to keep them safe, but an irrational part of Morrigan felt comforted that there was a pair of eyes watching during most of the night. The thought of darkspawn creeping about her home sent a prickly cold shiver down her spine. She hated the feeling. It was useless.

Morrigan rubbed a cramp from her calf, pulling some restorative magic to her palms as she did. It didn’t help much. Truth be told, she had never had a knack for drawing life from the Fade. Or anything good. But the bad things—those she could do with _feeling_. And now she’d have a chance to test that out, if Grey Wardens ran into as much danger as her mother had warned her.

She woke Eris and Alistair with little ceremony. While they stretched and rubbed the sleep from their eyes, Morrigan found the loaf of bulrush bread in her satchel and unwrapped it, breaking off a piece for each of them. They ate quickly and readied themselves for travel. Morrigan soon had them on the move again, grateful that neither of the bleary-eyed Wardens were feeling chatty.

The bright morning made navigating the treacherous marsh terrain much easier, though Morrigan soon felt a sheen of sweat gather on her skin in the sticky heat. She longed to transform; to take to the skies as the kestrel she’d learned to become and feel the cool wind beneath her borrowed feathers. As a bird she could fly to Lothering and back a half dozen times before she’d reach it as a human. The Wardens felt like chains dragging her down, and she bristled uncomfortably at the thought.

The elf jolted Morrigan from her reverie as she strode up beside her. She stretched out a tattooed arm, opening her hand to reveal the little bottle of draught Morrigan had given her last night, now drained to its earthy dregs.

“You should have woken me for watch,” Eris told her quietly.

Morrigan blinked and took the bottle from her, waiting until she had it settled in the protective pocket of her satchel before responding. “You needed the rest,” she said simply, and before she could stop herself, added, “You would have slowed us down without it.”

Morrigan winced internally at how callous she sounded, and chanced a sidelong glance at the elf beside her. Thankfully, Eris didn’t seem bothered, and simply matched Morrigan’s pace as they walked.

Alistair’s boots crunched far enough behind them that Morrigan didn’t have to worry about him trying to speak to her, and she and Eris lapsed into surprisingly companionable silence. Morrigan glanced down at her again, watching the woman’s large elven eyes scan the horizon of the grassy valley they were approaching. Mother sometimes spoke of the nomadic elven clan that had once lived in the Wilds; of the gifts they had left her and the way their eyes had glowed like a cat’s in the darkness.

As the two of them weaved their way through the tall grass that punctuated the edge of the forest, Morrigan found the comparison wasn’t lost on her. The elf’s gaze was keen and the steps she took light, but purposeful; she left little or no trace that she had been there at all.

Behind them, Alistair cracked a large stick beneath his boot. If the elf was a cat, Morrigan thought, then the ex-Templar was a blundering bear. Or maybe a dog. One too loyal to move its moping self from the grave of its dead master.

The muggy wilds gave way to the grassy Hinterlands valley, which welcomed them with a cool breeze and cricket-song. It was difficult to believe that not far away, darkspawn were fouling and burning the ancient grounds of Ostagar. Morrigan wasn’t sure she’d believe it herself if her wolf-eyes hadn’t watched the fateful battle from the safety of a nearby cliff-top.

If it could be called a battle. ’Slaughter’ would be more apt. Morrigan had watched the many thousands of soldiers in the valley below her, waiting to see what it would look like as they stormed the battleground. She never got to find out.

Instead, she had watched as the flags and torches of the much smaller army were slowly trampled to dust. She had watched as the cavalry retreated into the safety of the Southron Hills. She had watched as Flemeth, in the form of a great rukh, soared above the carnage to the Tower of Ishal.

Morrigan had seen more unbelievable things in that one night atop the cliff at Ostagar than she had during the rest of her life. The thought of staying in the safe and familiar confines of Mother’s hut seemed laughable now that she’d finally left. Holding back a shaky breath that was at once both terrified and excited at the very thought, she wondered how much more there was to see.

* * *

They were making good time across the even ground of the valley—such good time that Morrigan barely protested when Eris suddenly stopped walking and stared at the grass.

“What is it?” Morrigan asked, pleased that she managed to sound only mildly irritated.

Alistair let out an exaggerated breath and let the strap of his travel sack fall to his elbow. “Time for lunch?”

“No—well, maybe,” Eris said, blinking up at the sun that sat high in the sky. “It’s just…”

The elf had a terrible habit of not finishing her thoughts, Morrigan decided. She pursed her lips in mild disapproval as Eris knelt, studying the ground. Morrigan glanced back at Alistair, who had now dropped his pack entirely and was watching Eris with his hands on his hips. Their eyes met for a moment, and Morrigan raised a questioning brow at Alistair, who gave a little shrug.

“Uh, Eris…?” He said, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.

“The fever must have made me lose my mind,” Eris murmured. “Unless… wait here.”

Struck between the thought of catching her breath and obeying someone’s command, Morrigan decided to follow the elf. Alistair, who Morrigan thought must be incapable of doing anything _but_ following, came too.

Eris’s path was punctuated by occasional and annoying drops to her knees to inspect the dirt, but eventually led them up the small rocky incline that buffeted the valley, and into a thicket of trees. Morrigan was about to demand an explanation when she saw them.

Three horses and a large grey deer were grazing near the grassy bank. All four mounts were fully saddled, but looking rough—mud was caked thickly on their legs, their manes tangled, and they had a share of dried cuts and nasty scratches between them.

“They must have come from Ostagar—” Morrigan began, but she was cut short by a startled shout from Alistair.

“It’s Merri!” He cried, spreading his arms wide as he approached the group of horses. The black courser of the strange little herd nickered warily, but it was the buckskin Alistair walked to. “She’s… she’s Duncan’s horse,” Alistair explained, and the mare named Merri moved closer to let him rub her nose. Morrigan was horrified to see quiet, awed tears running down his cheeks. “He… he’s had her for years. Maker, I can’t believe it! Do you remember me, girl?”

Eris seemed to be having a moment of her own with the deer, who had lowered its great antlered head to let her rest her forehead against its muzzle. It bleated softly at her, and Morrigan realised she was speaking to it quietly, reverently, in elven.

Morrigan stared, slightly alarmed and very uncomfortable, between the two Wardens for a few moments before pointedly clearing her throat.

Eris raised her head from its rest against the deer. Her eyes were wet with unshed tears of her own, and Morrigan wanted to crawl into the ground. “You know this…deer, I assume?”

Eris seemed to sense Morrigan’s discomfort, which only served to make Morrigan even more uncomfortable. At least she was spared the tale of the mount’s history. “Halla. And yes, I do. Can you ride, Morrigan?”

That was an interesting question that didn’t have a straightforward answer. Morrigan had watched animals more closely than she guessed most people had ever thought to. Though she had never wished to learn their form (why should she want to become a beast of burden, after all?), she had studied horses when she’d had the nerve to sneak into villages and, more rarely, come across a wild herd. She’d read about the horses of Ferelden in one of her precious, stolen books. She could identify everything about them from their colour and coat variations, to the intricate patterns of their behaviour, to a broad but accurate overview of their muscular and skeletal structures.

But had she ever sat atop one? No, she had not.

Deciding that with enough knowledge in theory she could do anything she wished in practice, Morrigan answered with a curt ‘yes’.

“You should choose one,” Eris told her. “We’ll make it to Lothering sooner with mounts. I’m sure we’ll need them after that, too.”

Morrigan’s instinct was to argue, but it made sense. She looked at the two remaining horses. The strong black gelding with the little burns along its flank, and a tall, dappled grey mare.

The mare proudly flicked a buzzing fly from her dark mane. She was beautiful, but her height intimidated Morrigan. She held her hand out near its nose, but the horse merely blinked at her and looked away.

_You’re far too much like me to get along with_ , Morrigan thought.

The gelding, however, did move toward her outstretched hand for an introductory sniff. Morrigan patted his neck and gave him a few moments to adjust before she moved to his side to inspect the dozens of tiny burns. The image of a fire on the battlefield came to her mind, and she pictured the poor creature struck by blowing embers as it fled.

She hovered her hand above its skin, drawing as much healing energy as she could from the Fade. The horse’s ears twitched, and for a moment Morrigan was sure she was about to get a swift kick to the stomach, but the beast simply snorted quietly in response. “That’s the best I can do,” she murmured apologetically.

Morrigan turned to see Eris had already mounted the halla, while Alistair was adjusting the stirrups on his horse. Morrigan glanced at her horse’s gear and found she had no idea what to do, so she did nothing. She surreptitiously watched how Alistair mounted the mare and tried to copy his movements. She rested one foot in the stirrup of her horse, and when he didn’t seem about to buck her off, she swung herself up and over and into the saddle.

It wasn’t as difficult as she imagined it could have been. She shifted slightly in the saddle and managed to get her other foot inside the stirrup, though she had to stretch her legs a little more than she thought was natural to keep it there.

“Are your stirrups too long, Morrigan?” Eris asked. Morrigan flushed when she realised Eris had been watching her, and sat a little straighter in the saddle.

“No, they’re fine.”

Alistair was looking at her as well now. He was sitting in his saddle like he’d been raised in one, which for all Morrigan knew, he had. Wonderful. “Are you _sure_ you know how to ride?” He asked.

“Are you intent on asking fool questions all day,” Morrigan snapped, “Or do you think it may be slightly more helpful to our purpose to reach Lothering at some point?”

“All right, all right!” Alistair raised his hands defensively, but was at least smart enough not to press the matter. “Well, we should take the other mare with us. We can find a buyer in Lothering, I’m certain. Assuming you two don’t have a bag of sovereigns stashed away somewhere, we’ll need the money.”

Eris and Morrigan exchanged a glance, and Morrigan felt a reluctant kinship borne from the shared experience of two women who had never _needed_ money in their lives. Neither of them was willing to argue the point, however. Even Morrigan had to admit money would probably come in handy.

Eris squeezed her legs against the halla’s side, spurring him into movement. She clicked her tongue at the dappled mare, who hesitated for a moment before finally following along when she saw Alistair’s horse begin to move too.

Morrigan pursed her lips in preparation for anything as she copied the movement of squeezing her legs against the horse’s sides, but the gelding went from a standstill to a walk quite smoothly.

Riding wasn’t so bad, she thought. Morrigan was bringing up the rear, so she was able to observe Alistair and Eris’s movements, and the gelding seemed quite happy to simply follow the stag and other horses he clearly knew as his companions. She found herself swaying in the saddle as the horse stepped down the rocky crest of the hill, but Morrigan had seen Eris lean back in her own saddle for balance, so she did the same and managed to stay upright with something resembling dignity.

Things were going well until Eris and Alistair spurred their mounts into a trot once they were in the valley. The gelding broke into a trot to catch up, and Morrigan found herself bouncing uncomfortably against the saddle. She held onto the reins for dear life, and didn’t even notice that Eris and her halla had fallen back next to her until the elf started speaking.

“Try to move _with_ the horse,” Eris suggested, softly enough that Alistair wouldn’t hear. “Like this.” Morrigan watched as Eris braced her feet against the stirrups to slightly rise and fall in her saddle to the rhythm of the halla’s gait.

Morrigan tried to do the same, but found the stirrups too long. With a look of horror, she realised Alistair had begun cantering ahead of them. In a chain reaction, the dappled grey mare started following along, and Eris’s halla began to pull ahead as it matched their pace.

It happened almost in slow motion. The gelding, as though excited at the very thought, broke into a canter with the other animals. If Morrigan had been just able to handle the trot, this was a step too far. She felt herself shifting against the saddle, and had the horrible, gut-wrenching sensation of gravity getting the better of her.Her right foot slipped from the stirrup, and she realised she’d twisted too far off of the horse to be really considered on it any longer, when she thought:

_Oh, absolutely not._

With a whispered spell and the comforting embrace of the Fade, she left her human form behind and took to the air, clothing moulting to feathers as her lips hardened into a beak. In the sky, the ground seemed so far away, so very unable to hit her in the ass. And she didn’t have to worry about horses or stirrups or cantering or whatever-else the damned animals were supposed to do.

With the cold pride of a hawk, Morrigan caught a glimpse of Eris as she threw her blonde head back in delighted laughter at the sight.


End file.
